Hashibashi - does this mean it's okay to place the chopsticks across the top if it's not to show you're finished? I heard that was okay as long as you align them not to point at another person (not across the table). If there's no chopstick rest I'm not sure where else you're supposed to put your chopsticks.
Also I'm not sure how you're supposed to eat e.g. fried rice without yokobashi or kakibashi.
Also! I thought kaeshibashi was a good thing. I've definitely seen people do that at parties.
Interesting. Some of these are big deals (particularly the ones mentioned as important) but others I have seen Japanese people in Tokyo do quite consistently. Soroebashi - not on the table, but I've seen chopsticks aligned by pushing them against the plate hundreds of time. I've also seen them used to stir miso soup, etc. plenty.
Others I don't know that I would have much of an inclination to do and haven't seen but am not sure if it's because it really is a faux pas or just because no one else really tends to do it either.
I think if you were to do an Osaka version of this, the list would be limited to maybe 4 of these (licking, chopsticks upright in rice, passing between chopsticks, and pointing esp. toward a senior would be taboo).
Whereas when I had a date with a girl from Kyoto, one of the first things that happened when we went to eat was she had to stop me from picking up my chopsticks impolitely and show me the proper way of doing it.
Suffice it to say my Osaka-learned table manners and speech patterns meant there was no second date.
I'm not sure I'd put it down entirely to Osaka versus Kyoto. My impression is that these things often have at least as much to do with upbringing, formality, and social background as with region.
I don't know where you're from, so apologies if this is an unfair assumption, but in countries like the US or Australia people often seem less attuned to social class, whereas in places like the UK, France, and indeed Japan, those distinctions can carry more weight, even if they almost always go unspoken.
I remember being blown away when I was in a Kyoto Familymart after a few months of living in Osaka after they handed me my fried chicken very delicately with both hands like it was a business card!
I guess that’s the cultural divide that occurs when one community is fishing and trading while the other does, like, competitive perfumed calligraphy or whatever.
The difference between the American and European styles has been used as plot point in fictional works, including the 1946 film O.S.S. and the 2014 series Turn: Washington's Spies.[5] In both works, using the wrong fork etiquette threatens to expose undercover agents.
Nuts. Apparently I have been a German spy all this time. I don't have time to waste swapping a fork around.
Yes! Hardly anyone knows it all, and even people who know the basics adjust their behavior based on the situation. Eating out with your high school buddies requires a different level of observance than the dinner at which your girlfriend is introducing you to her parents.
This makes total sense to me. There is no monolithic “culture”— there are multiple related cultures, differing little in essence but differing greatly in the details. And each individual is usually only partially ignorant anyway.
Culture changes, too, and asymmetrically. So the “done thing” may be done be very few anymore.
Half of this list feels about as important as remembering the order of spoons on a table. Something that probably meant a lot 100 years ago but is mostly forgotten now.
The original reasons for not putting your elbows on the table (limited space, as well as some others) just don't apply anymore. There's no reason _not_ to put your elbows on the table other than "that's how it's always been done". As such, at least in my opinion, the rule no longer applies.
I've seen those too. I was going to say that I've seen people put the bowl to their mouth and shovel food in with chopsticks, but now that I come to think about it that might well actually be from the series Tokyo Diner and Takeshi Kitano films, and may be deliberately uncouth characterisations...
I'm under the impression this is a Chinese vs. Japanese difference. Shoveling food into your mouth is perfectly acceptable in Chinese etiquette but discouraged in Japanese. Accordingly the Japanese cook their rice to clump together so it's easier to pick up using your chopsticks so that you don't have to resort to shoveling.
it's like western etiquette: upper class, fine dining traditional practices are not what you'll see everyday even among polite society. the spectrum of behaviors will also depend on one's company.
I assume this must be the case here because I'm familiar with a lot of different etiquette contexts in the US and I have the impression that Japan has far more of that sort of thing than we do. Off the top of my head there are (at minimum) the way we were expected to eat in front of my grandparents, a more "regular" dinner with the extended family, a small gathering at a tex mex joint or chain restaurant or whatever, a fast food joint, and whatever slovenly things I do while sitting on my couch in private.
Anyone from a particularly wealthy family can probably add an additional couple contexts on the high end. Every single one of those situations has slightly different "rules" for what's acceptable.
Yeah? How are you supposed to line up the sticks? And stir the soup? I think the "Mawashibashi" faux pas is to whip the soup like a madman, or to aimlessly swish it, and the translated listicle doesn't convey that.
When I first moved to Taiwan and was just getting a handle on Chinese, I asked a waiter "請給我一個筷子" - not yet being familiar with proper measure words.
The waiter (who had a bit of a sense of humor) brought me exactly ONE chopstick. I laughed and repeated 請給我另一個筷子 (Please give me another chopstick) and he brought out another one.
Of course later my friend told me that I should have used 雙 to indicate I wanted a "pair" of chopsticks.
The article does a good job calling out the more serious offenses, although I’d personally argue that nigiribashi is just as bad as the other two. Most Japanese people would probably react with a bit of shock to those.
That said, chopstick etiquette is definitely evolving. Something like chobujubashi isn’t enforced as strictly anymore, especially with more awareness around left-handed users. Kaeshibashi, on the other hand, is becoming more common, and in some social circles, not doing it can actually come across as rude.
I was shocked to find it's a faux pas to rub disposable chopsticks to remove potential splinters. I was taught this is what you're supposed to do with disposable chopsticks.
It's rude if it's a nice establishment, as it conveys your belief that the chopsticks are of low quality. So that's what you're signaling with that. If everyone already knows they are cheap (e.g. disposable), then have at it.
I once witnessed a local admonish another (younger) local for exactly that at a bar. He replied with a bratty "Not my fault they're using crappy chopsticks..."
I ate at a very nice restaurant (think The Menu) in Kagaonsen last week and the main course was served with lacquered chopsticks but another course was served with disposable chopsticks and the waiter actually broke them and rubbed them together for me. I think the social faux pas is making a show of doing it.
The splinters come from where they break apart and there's not really any reason to have that part of the chopsticks touching your skin.
But you move away from break apart disposable chopsticks in Japan long before you get to high etiquette dining. In my experience, basically every restaurant in Japan that isn't of, like, fast food tier, provides actual chopsticks instead of disposable ones.
I had mostly disposables but they were actually lathed wood. The crude rectangular cut chopsticks are terrible -- usually not for splinters, but they often break imperfectly, leaving you with two sticks with different lengths.
For those cheap chopsticks, I've found the best way to break them is to grasp them at the very tips, then move your two hands away from each other briskly without twisting, just straight apart. I haven't had many break badly since I started doing this.
For anyone else curious after reading "-bashi" 40 times:
(Not gonna direct quote because the damn site doesn't allow copy-pasting so they don't get a link, paraphrased):
Kirai-bashi would be literally translated to "dislike-chopsticks" and means bad chopstick table-manners. Hashi is chopsticks and bashi is the voiced form of it.
So the bashi suffix/word on the end of all of these just means chopsticks it seems.
To add to this, voicing is also a way for Japanese words to become more “coherent”, the same way you write “dislike-chopsticks” as one combined noun, and not “dislike chopsticks”.
Most of these are common sense. As a tourist foreigner, you also aren't expected to know all the customs but it's appreciated when you try. The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me. If you just watch what other people are doing, then try to do the same thing, you're probably on the right track.
Related to eating, one pro-tip I got from a local is that when you're ready to close your tab or get your check at a bar or restaurant, you can make a small X with your index fingers.
A lot of them are not common sense at all. Even the 'serious' ones require cultural knowledge to understand. Only a subset of the rest would be un-ideal across cultures, which is what I would use to measure 'common sense'.
It's like how in some asian cultures it's rude to bring the bowl closer to you by lifting it off the table, and in others it's the opposite. And of course there's some just-so story for why, that seems to make sense if you don't know about the opposing just-so story.
Things like that aren't what I'd call common sense.
Using your fork, knife, or spoon to point at a person is absolutely considered rude. Gesturing with utensils likewise (because you can shower others with cast off detritus.)
A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of results corroborating this.
Or just consider the “asshole dinner guest” trope that appears in so many TV shows and movies. They will always be talking too loudly and gesticulating/pointing with their cutlery.
1. I have seen Japanese people do approximately half of the things on the list.
2. The two listed as "serious" are related to Japanese funerary rites, and so are clearly culturally specific.
3. Several of the things listed are perfectly acceptable in other chopstick-using cultures. Many are also perfectly acceptable to do with a fork and/or knife in cultures that use forks and knives. I think I would go so far as to say that there is not a single thing on there for which it would be widely considered rude to do in all cultures.
> To use the chopsticks to pick something out from near the bottom of the dish.
I think there must be some bits that are lost in translation for some of these. This makes it sound like you can't eat all of the food in a bowl with your chopsticks.
Yeah, could be - that's kind of what I mean in terms of being lost in translation. It feels like there's missing information / context in quite a few of them.
Edit: In fact I think you're completely right - "picking out" something near the bottom of the dish does suggest that.
Let me check but I think it refers to a shared dish; at an izakaiya you often order a bunch of shared food plates and then serve yourself from them.
It is definitely rude to use chopsticks that you just put in your mouth to go rooting around for something in those. You are supposed to take from the top and ideally turn them around using the back end. Some people frown on using the back ends however as it may have been touched by your hand...
Edit add: It means to dig food out, either from your own dish or a shared one. Like mixing the food up to look for something you like in it.
Some of these sound just as made-up as a lot of Western dining "rules." Maybe someone more familiar with the culture can say whether or not these are true faux pas in an everyday ramen shop or similar.
Even expensive restaurants in Japan use disposable chopsticks. And you only get splinters on your chopsticks because you're rubbing them in your hands and making pieces break off.
In all my decades of using chopsticks, I've never had a splinter poke me. But I've seen people rub their chopsticks then complain about splinters.
I was really confused by this because I've spent about 6 months of my life in Tokyo and got very very very few disposable chopsticks at restaurants a tier above, like, shokken ramen shops.
But the internet informs me that the composite chopsticks that I am used to seeing went away during covid and now disposable wooden chopsticks are the norm.
There are the ones that are partly rounded and only attached for a cm or so at the top. They are fine. Then there are the square ones that are attached for half or more of the length and don't always break apart cleanly. They have never poked me, but they have shed bits into my food before that I had to pick out. I will stop cleaning up the ones that don't actually need it. I didn't realize it was offensive.
he he... is that the equivalent of when I was a kid we differentiated by "drive-in", "paper-napkin restaurant" and "cloth-napkin restaurant" in order of how much trouble you would be in if you embarrassed your parents.
> To keep putting the chopsticks into the same side dishes. It is proper etiquette to first eat rice, move on to eat from a side dish, eat rice again, and then eat from a different side dish.
So keto itself is a faux pas?
> 返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
>> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
> Ewww. I’d rather be rude than share germs.
I think this means you should use something other than your chopsticks to share food, and not just assume that "the back of my chopsticks are germ-free, I'll use that"
You will quickly learn the first one because if you keep eating the delicious side dishes you will be only left with large amounts of bland rice to eat last.
Keto diet doesn’t exist in Japanese cuisine. If you’re going to a keto friendly place, it’s something trendy and contemporary so this traditional advice obviously doesn’t apply. It is not a faux-pas to eat non traditional / non Japanese cuisine.
Some of these I’ve been told are taboos in the opposite way. For example, the one about serving or taking food from the opposite end of the chopsticks, I was told, is polite. But here they say it is taboo. Maybe they meant it’s taboo not to do that?
Yes, it’s weirdly ambiguous. But even that is performative, as you’re still using an unsanitary part - the part that has touched your hand vs the part that has touched your lips.
Glad to know I haven’t picked up any seriously bad habits, but how the heck do you keep the chopsticks aligned without tapping them somewhere?
Most of these seem related to health/sanitary practices/being considerate more than anything. Just avoiding contaminating what others are going to eat with your own utensils is an easy way to describe several of them.
You can just slide them with your fingers, even one handed, and it's not like they need to be perfectly aligned.
But, yeah, I tap them to align them all the time, have seen Japanese people do it day in and day out. I've even done it in some fine dining places in Japan. No one yelled at me, but I am a gaijin, so...
Fascinating culture and raises numerous questions arising from my subsequent confusion:
1. > 返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
Does this mean it is preferable to use the tips that may have touched mouth to then serve more food? Or is this considered fine because it's also taboo to touch the tips to your mouth? (which only a BARBARIAN would do!)
2. > こすり箸 Kosuribashi
> To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.
Just proceed to eat some splinters, then? What is the good etiquette way to handle low quality el-cheapo chopsticks?
---
I have been guilty of the above as well as:
Chigiribashi - Hold one chopstick in each hand and use them like a knife and fork to tear or cut food into smaller pieces.
Soroebashi - Hold chopsticks together and tap them on a dish or the top of the table to align the tips.
Namidabashi - Allow sauce or soup to drip from the tips of the chopsticks when eating. Namida means “tears.”
Nigiribashi - Grip both chopsticks in a fist.
Neburibashi - Lick the chopsticks.
Hashibashi - Place the chopsticks like a bridge across the top of a dish to show one is finished. Chopsticks should be placed on the hashioki (chopstick rest).
Furibashi - Shake off soup, sauce, or small bits of food from the tips of the chopsticks.
Mogibashi - Bite off and eat grains of rice that are stuck to the chopsticks.
Yokobashi - Line the chopsticks up together and use them like a spoon to scoop up food.
.. growing up my mom used to say, "What are you, raised by wolves!?" .. apparently, yes!
The preference is to use a separate pair of communal chopsticks that is not used directly for eating.
> Kosuribashi
I have heard that this one is because it's considered to be an insult implying that the chopsticks are low-quality. (That said, if your chopsticks are indeed low-quality, then avoiding splinters is probably preferable to then visibly plucking splinters out of your fingers.)
> Just proceed to eat some splinters, then? What is the good etiquette way to handle low quality el-cheapo chopsticks?
Well first of all the chopsticks are joined at the non-eating end, typically. So the splinters would be bothering your fingers more than anything.
It's rude because it insults the host, in a way. Anywhere that would care about you doing it should not be giving you the cheap chopsticks in the first place. If you're in a place that gives you them, they probably don't care about you doing it.
I think it's important to point out that these are good manners for eating with Japanese people, not good manners for eating with chopsticks. There is no requirement to emulate Japanese eating manners if you're not in Japan and not anywhere near a person raised in Japanese cultur. There are other cultures that use chopsticks that do not necessarily have these manners.
This is definitely true - but some of these are fairly universal, or at least that is my understanding. I believe the 'no sticking chopsticks upright in rice' one is shared between Japan, Korea, China, etc. for example - it looks like funerary incense/joss sticks in all three due to the shared aspects of their cultures, for example.
Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China. Seems like islanders, due to their reliance on trade, naturally get specialized and autistic about their craft so they can have a comparative advantage, and their obsessions carry over into stuffy traditional practices.
>Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China.
when America was settled/founded by Britains, etiquette had not been standardized in GB either so the differences are due to parallel development, not island vs continent. That probably holds even more for differences between Japan and China.
I'm curious for a native's opinion on how important these are. The etiquette I was taught growing up in the US is a mix of:
- several things that are often quoted as good etiquette but nobody follows (elbows off the table, correct order of dishes)
- lots of things that are customary but nobody cares if you don't follow it (napkin on lap, placement of silverware)
- only a few things that actually matter and would be considered rude by normal people (don't touch shared food with used silverware, keep your mouth closed while chewing)
Of these several dozen "rules" for chopsticks, how many actually fall into the last category of things that actually matter?
People told me to avoid placing chopsticks upwards in a bowl before I even went to Japan so that is the only one I’d keep in mind.
Given how many of these are clever tricks that I learned from seeing Japanese people eat, like aligning the chopsticks quickly in a plate or cleaning waribashi from splinters by rubbing them together, I’d not take all of these seriously, but it’s cool to know nonetheless.
Yeah it's a pretty flexible rule, but it's at least something to think about, unlike a lot of other "rules" that you're allowed to completely disregard for your entire life. I probably was too strict in describing that last bullet point.
I lived in Japan for nearly 6 years and found that concern for faux pas such as these for hashi (chopsticks) are way way overblown. I used at least one thousand disposable pairs of chopsticks in Japan and never had the desire to smooth them -- they are higher quality than Panda Express offerings. I knew about this "taboo" prior to arrival and it was simply irrelevant. Avoid the obvious symbolic references to makura gohan (bowl of rice offering to the deceased) at the end of your meal and you are probably golden. If you have kids in Japan, gaijin passing food with chopsticks to their children in a restaurant is going to be seen in a neutral or even sympathetic light. The Japanese may silently judge but they rarely sneer or harass. If you spend a lot of time with modern Japanese families you might be surprised to discover Western stereotypes of Japanese taboos are sometimes outdated and even incorrect. They are very aware that foreigners will not understand all of their customs, and many of those customs have decreasing importance as their culture evolves.
Passing food by placing it directly on someone else's plate or bowl is fine. The taboo is specifically about two people holding onto the same thing at the same tine with chopsticks, the way cremated bone fragments are placed into the urn at kotsuage.
Other than that, I agree. It's kind of like trying to apply Emily Post's etiquette to TV dinners: many of these "rules" would be viewed as prissy by Japanese and some (eg. giving your miso soup a swirl with your chopsticks before drinking) are very, very commonly ignored.
The main one for me is not putting your chopsticks on top of the bowl rim or putting the chopsticks sticking up from the rice. Those are both intuitive natural actions for me. In the US I rarely see chopstick rests so I'm always wonderting what to do with them when I'm not using them.
Hashibashi - does this mean it's okay to place the chopsticks across the top if it's not to show you're finished? I heard that was okay as long as you align them not to point at another person (not across the table). If there's no chopstick rest I'm not sure where else you're supposed to put your chopsticks.
Also I'm not sure how you're supposed to eat e.g. fried rice without yokobashi or kakibashi.
Also! I thought kaeshibashi was a good thing. I've definitely seen people do that at parties.
My heart is lightened to learn inserting the chopsticks into your mouth to make walrus fangs is not taboo.
I'm betting Kuwaebashi covers that.
Interesting. Some of these are big deals (particularly the ones mentioned as important) but others I have seen Japanese people in Tokyo do quite consistently. Soroebashi - not on the table, but I've seen chopsticks aligned by pushing them against the plate hundreds of time. I've also seen them used to stir miso soup, etc. plenty.
Others I don't know that I would have much of an inclination to do and haven't seen but am not sure if it's because it really is a faux pas or just because no one else really tends to do it either.
I think if you were to do an Osaka version of this, the list would be limited to maybe 4 of these (licking, chopsticks upright in rice, passing between chopsticks, and pointing esp. toward a senior would be taboo).
Whereas when I had a date with a girl from Kyoto, one of the first things that happened when we went to eat was she had to stop me from picking up my chopsticks impolitely and show me the proper way of doing it.
Suffice it to say my Osaka-learned table manners and speech patterns meant there was no second date.
I'm not sure I'd put it down entirely to Osaka versus Kyoto. My impression is that these things often have at least as much to do with upbringing, formality, and social background as with region.
I don't know where you're from, so apologies if this is an unfair assumption, but in countries like the US or Australia people often seem less attuned to social class, whereas in places like the UK, France, and indeed Japan, those distinctions can carry more weight, even if they almost always go unspoken.
Agreed. Was always taught to never put elbows on the table, but as an adult I see people do it everywhere.
I live in Osaka (only lived here a year) and it is fascinating the vibe change between Osaka and Kyoto.
It's always wild to me when I hear about how different the culture is between Osaka and Kyoto when they're so close.
I remember being blown away when I was in a Kyoto Familymart after a few months of living in Osaka after they handed me my fried chicken very delicately with both hands like it was a business card!
I guess that’s the cultural divide that occurs when one community is fishing and trading while the other does, like, competitive perfumed calligraphy or whatever.
competitive perfumed calligraphic etiquette -- of your grandfathers!
There's equally complex dining and utensils etiquette in Western culture but it's largely omitted (or even unknown) on daily basis.
There is a wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_utensil_etiquette
Edit: The wiki on chopsticks has an etiquette section broken down by country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopsticks#Chopstick_customs,_...
Yes! Hardly anyone knows it all, and even people who know the basics adjust their behavior based on the situation. Eating out with your high school buddies requires a different level of observance than the dinner at which your girlfriend is introducing you to her parents.
That's not really a coherent statement.
If people don't even know it, it's not part of the culture.
Who are the “people” that you are referring to?
This makes total sense to me. There is no monolithic “culture”— there are multiple related cultures, differing little in essence but differing greatly in the details. And each individual is usually only partially ignorant anyway.
Culture changes, too, and asymmetrically. So the “done thing” may be done be very few anymore.
I guess I was talking about the people that don't know about the culture you guys say they are part of.
I’m Japanese, but honestly, I don’t pay much attention to it. My parents used to get on me about it when I was a kid, but I still do it sometimes.
Half of this list feels about as important as remembering the order of spoons on a table. Something that probably meant a lot 100 years ago but is mostly forgotten now.
You also see plenty of americans put their elbows on the table.
The original reasons for not putting your elbows on the table (limited space, as well as some others) just don't apply anymore. There's no reason _not_ to put your elbows on the table other than "that's how it's always been done". As such, at least in my opinion, the rule no longer applies.
sailors eat with their elbows on the table, to keep their fare from sliding as the boat rocks. don't look poor!
I've seen those too. I was going to say that I've seen people put the bowl to their mouth and shovel food in with chopsticks, but now that I come to think about it that might well actually be from the series Tokyo Diner and Takeshi Kitano films, and may be deliberately uncouth characterisations...
Bringing the bowl close to your mouth and picking food up from it is proper. Pushing it from the bowl into your mouth is impolite but common.
I'm under the impression this is a Chinese vs. Japanese difference. Shoveling food into your mouth is perfectly acceptable in Chinese etiquette but discouraged in Japanese. Accordingly the Japanese cook their rice to clump together so it's easier to pick up using your chopsticks so that you don't have to resort to shoveling.
I thought it was okay to shovel noodles, but have not heard it was okay for rice.
it's like western etiquette: upper class, fine dining traditional practices are not what you'll see everyday even among polite society. the spectrum of behaviors will also depend on one's company.
I assume this must be the case here because I'm familiar with a lot of different etiquette contexts in the US and I have the impression that Japan has far more of that sort of thing than we do. Off the top of my head there are (at minimum) the way we were expected to eat in front of my grandparents, a more "regular" dinner with the extended family, a small gathering at a tex mex joint or chain restaurant or whatever, a fast food joint, and whatever slovenly things I do while sitting on my couch in private.
Anyone from a particularly wealthy family can probably add an additional couple contexts on the high end. Every single one of those situations has slightly different "rules" for what's acceptable.
We have a lot of dining etiquette too if you look into it. But it’s mostly forgotten and irrelevant high class behavior.
And then there’s my favorite, the southern seafood boil etiquette.
Yeah? How are you supposed to line up the sticks? And stir the soup? I think the "Mawashibashi" faux pas is to whip the soup like a madman, or to aimlessly swish it, and the translated listicle doesn't convey that.
You could surreptitiously agitate the soup as you pull out the solid contents.
Line them up by using your hands. It’s simple…
If you must mix soup, there is a spoon, or you simply bring it to your lips and it will mix as you tilt and sip from it.
Phew, I'm glad "inserting them into your nostrils and braying like a walrus" isn't on the list.
waruburashi
odobashi?
SNORT
Don't, you'll get chopsticks in your sinuses
I think it's number 9 in the list
sacrilegious lol
When I first moved to Taiwan and was just getting a handle on Chinese, I asked a waiter "請給我一個筷子" - not yet being familiar with proper measure words.
The waiter (who had a bit of a sense of humor) brought me exactly ONE chopstick. I laughed and repeated 請給我另一個筷子 (Please give me another chopstick) and he brought out another one.
Of course later my friend told me that I should have used 雙 to indicate I wanted a "pair" of chopsticks.
The article does a good job calling out the more serious offenses, although I’d personally argue that nigiribashi is just as bad as the other two. Most Japanese people would probably react with a bit of shock to those.
That said, chopstick etiquette is definitely evolving. Something like chobujubashi isn’t enforced as strictly anymore, especially with more awareness around left-handed users. Kaeshibashi, on the other hand, is becoming more common, and in some social circles, not doing it can actually come across as rude.
> Kaeshibashi, on the other hand, is becoming more common, and in some social circles, not doing it can actually come across as rude.
I was always under the impression this was the polite thing to do.
Chobukubashi would make being left-handed decidedly annoying.
On the other hand (so to speak), European style (fork stays in left hand) is great for left-handers.
Sandpaper or dremel aren't on the forbidden list.
I was shocked to find it's a faux pas to rub disposable chopsticks to remove potential splinters. I was taught this is what you're supposed to do with disposable chopsticks.
It's rude if it's a nice establishment, as it conveys your belief that the chopsticks are of low quality. So that's what you're signaling with that. If everyone already knows they are cheap (e.g. disposable), then have at it.
If a nice establishment has splintery chopsticks maybe they should look in the mirror.
Probably it's rude to do it automatically with every pair of disposable chopsticks and not just the crappy ones.
I once witnessed a local admonish another (younger) local for exactly that at a bar. He replied with a bratty "Not my fault they're using crappy chopsticks..."
I ate at a very nice restaurant (think The Menu) in Kagaonsen last week and the main course was served with lacquered chopsticks but another course was served with disposable chopsticks and the waiter actually broke them and rubbed them together for me. I think the social faux pas is making a show of doing it.
Perhaps they did that because they knew some people would be too polite to?
I agree. I always have to do it, except at the rare restaurants. Not just splinters, but rough edges too.
right? What's the right way? I don't want splinters on the most sensitive surface in my body..
The splinters come from where they break apart and there's not really any reason to have that part of the chopsticks touching your skin.
But you move away from break apart disposable chopsticks in Japan long before you get to high etiquette dining. In my experience, basically every restaurant in Japan that isn't of, like, fast food tier, provides actual chopsticks instead of disposable ones.
I had mostly disposables but they were actually lathed wood. The crude rectangular cut chopsticks are terrible -- usually not for splinters, but they often break imperfectly, leaving you with two sticks with different lengths.
For those cheap chopsticks, I've found the best way to break them is to grasp them at the very tips, then move your two hands away from each other briskly without twisting, just straight apart. I haven't had many break badly since I started doing this.
For anyone else curious after reading "-bashi" 40 times:
(Not gonna direct quote because the damn site doesn't allow copy-pasting so they don't get a link, paraphrased):
Kirai-bashi would be literally translated to "dislike-chopsticks" and means bad chopstick table-manners. Hashi is chopsticks and bashi is the voiced form of it.
So the bashi suffix/word on the end of all of these just means chopsticks it seems.
To add to this, voicing is also a way for Japanese words to become more “coherent”, the same way you write “dislike-chopsticks” as one combined noun, and not “dislike chopsticks”.
Most of these are common sense. As a tourist foreigner, you also aren't expected to know all the customs but it's appreciated when you try. The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me. If you just watch what other people are doing, then try to do the same thing, you're probably on the right track.
Related to eating, one pro-tip I got from a local is that when you're ready to close your tab or get your check at a bar or restaurant, you can make a small X with your index fingers.
Really useful in a busy bar!
> Most of these are common sense.
A lot of them are not common sense at all. Even the 'serious' ones require cultural knowledge to understand. Only a subset of the rest would be un-ideal across cultures, which is what I would use to measure 'common sense'.
It's like how in some asian cultures it's rude to bring the bowl closer to you by lifting it off the table, and in others it's the opposite. And of course there's some just-so story for why, that seems to make sense if you don't know about the opposing just-so story.
Things like that aren't what I'd call common sense.
A bunch of the common sense ones, like not pointing at someone with your ustensiles, are the same in western etiquette.
It’s not western etiquette and makes no sense to me
Using your fork, knife, or spoon to point at a person is absolutely considered rude. Gesturing with utensils likewise (because you can shower others with cast off detritus.)
A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of results corroborating this.
Or just consider the “asshole dinner guest” trope that appears in so many TV shows and movies. They will always be talking too loudly and gesticulating/pointing with their cutlery.
1. I have seen Japanese people do approximately half of the things on the list.
2. The two listed as "serious" are related to Japanese funerary rites, and so are clearly culturally specific.
3. Several of the things listed are perfectly acceptable in other chopstick-using cultures. Many are also perfectly acceptable to do with a fork and/or knife in cultures that use forks and knives. I think I would go so far as to say that there is not a single thing on there for which it would be widely considered rude to do in all cultures.
> The one about which direction to NOT point the chopsticks in was new to me.
I suspect it mostly affects left handed people.
> こじ箸 Kojibashi (also known as ほじり箸 hojiribashi)
> To use the chopsticks to pick something out from near the bottom of the dish.
I think there must be some bits that are lost in translation for some of these. This makes it sound like you can't eat all of the food in a bowl with your chopsticks.
Maybe it means that you're digging up food that is under other food?
Yeah, could be - that's kind of what I mean in terms of being lost in translation. It feels like there's missing information / context in quite a few of them.
Edit: In fact I think you're completely right - "picking out" something near the bottom of the dish does suggest that.
Let me check but I think it refers to a shared dish; at an izakaiya you often order a bunch of shared food plates and then serve yourself from them.
It is definitely rude to use chopsticks that you just put in your mouth to go rooting around for something in those. You are supposed to take from the top and ideally turn them around using the back end. Some people frown on using the back ends however as it may have been touched by your hand...
Edit add: It means to dig food out, either from your own dish or a shared one. Like mixing the food up to look for something you like in it.
返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
I think just written in an ambiguous way: "dish" here refers to the food contained in the vessel and not the vessel itself.
It's like core-ing out the goody bits from an otherwise bland pint of ice cream. Who would ever do such a disgusting and selfish thing? :-0
Some of these sound just as made-up as a lot of Western dining "rules." Maybe someone more familiar with the culture can say whether or not these are true faux pas in an everyday ramen shop or similar.
They’re not fake but some are not followed by everyone outside of formal situations
I always do the splinter thing. I thought that was normal. If the place has disposable chopsticks it isn't the sort of place etiquette matters is it?
Even expensive restaurants in Japan use disposable chopsticks. And you only get splinters on your chopsticks because you're rubbing them in your hands and making pieces break off.
In all my decades of using chopsticks, I've never had a splinter poke me. But I've seen people rub their chopsticks then complain about splinters.
I was really confused by this because I've spent about 6 months of my life in Tokyo and got very very very few disposable chopsticks at restaurants a tier above, like, shokken ramen shops.
But the internet informs me that the composite chopsticks that I am used to seeing went away during covid and now disposable wooden chopsticks are the norm.
There are the ones that are partly rounded and only attached for a cm or so at the top. They are fine. Then there are the square ones that are attached for half or more of the length and don't always break apart cleanly. They have never poked me, but they have shed bits into my food before that I had to pick out. I will stop cleaning up the ones that don't actually need it. I didn't realize it was offensive.
he he... is that the equivalent of when I was a kid we differentiated by "drive-in", "paper-napkin restaurant" and "cloth-napkin restaurant" in order of how much trouble you would be in if you embarrassed your parents.
I have always wondered when I used the pair of chopsticks to push food on my fork, if there was a name for my type.
I love how they have words for the different kinds of rule breaking. Truly civilized people.
> 移り箸 Utsuribashi (also known as 渡り箸 wataribashi)
> To keep putting the chopsticks into the same side dishes. It is proper etiquette to first eat rice, move on to eat from a side dish, eat rice again, and then eat from a different side dish.
So keto itself is a faux pas?
> 返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
Ewww. I’d rather be rude than share germs.
>> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
> Ewww. I’d rather be rude than share germs.
I think this means you should use something other than your chopsticks to share food, and not just assume that "the back of my chopsticks are germ-free, I'll use that"
You will quickly learn the first one because if you keep eating the delicious side dishes you will be only left with large amounts of bland rice to eat last.
It would be pretty irritating if someone in your dinner party ate the lion's share of the more flavorful food and left the rice for everyone else.
Keto diet doesn’t exist in Japanese cuisine. If you’re going to a keto friendly place, it’s something trendy and contemporary so this traditional advice obviously doesn’t apply. It is not a faux-pas to eat non traditional / non Japanese cuisine.
Keto diet doesn’t exist in western cuisine either. It’s a niche thing in both places, and both places have specific single dishes without carbs.
What a coincidence... I was just in my backyard shed playing with my robot chopstick. https://youtu.be/BhBXliscj0I
Some of these I’ve been told are taboos in the opposite way. For example, the one about serving or taking food from the opposite end of the chopsticks, I was told, is polite. But here they say it is taboo. Maybe they meant it’s taboo not to do that?
Yes, it’s weirdly ambiguous. But even that is performative, as you’re still using an unsanitary part - the part that has touched your hand vs the part that has touched your lips.
Glad to know I haven’t picked up any seriously bad habits, but how the heck do you keep the chopsticks aligned without tapping them somewhere?
Most of these seem related to health/sanitary practices/being considerate more than anything. Just avoiding contaminating what others are going to eat with your own utensils is an easy way to describe several of them.
You can just slide them with your fingers, even one handed, and it's not like they need to be perfectly aligned.
But, yeah, I tap them to align them all the time, have seen Japanese people do it day in and day out. I've even done it in some fine dining places in Japan. No one yelled at me, but I am a gaijin, so...
Fascinating culture and raises numerous questions arising from my subsequent confusion:
1. > 返し箸 Kaeshibashi (also known as 逆さ箸 sakasabashi)
> To turn the chopsticks around when serving food so that the tips of the chopsticks that have touched one’s mouth do not touch the food.
Does this mean it is preferable to use the tips that may have touched mouth to then serve more food? Or is this considered fine because it's also taboo to touch the tips to your mouth? (which only a BARBARIAN would do!)
2. > こすり箸 Kosuribashi
> To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.
Just proceed to eat some splinters, then? What is the good etiquette way to handle low quality el-cheapo chopsticks?
---
I have been guilty of the above as well as:
Chigiribashi - Hold one chopstick in each hand and use them like a knife and fork to tear or cut food into smaller pieces.
Soroebashi - Hold chopsticks together and tap them on a dish or the top of the table to align the tips.
Namidabashi - Allow sauce or soup to drip from the tips of the chopsticks when eating. Namida means “tears.”
Nigiribashi - Grip both chopsticks in a fist.
Neburibashi - Lick the chopsticks.
Hashibashi - Place the chopsticks like a bridge across the top of a dish to show one is finished. Chopsticks should be placed on the hashioki (chopstick rest).
Furibashi - Shake off soup, sauce, or small bits of food from the tips of the chopsticks.
Mogibashi - Bite off and eat grains of rice that are stuck to the chopsticks.
Yokobashi - Line the chopsticks up together and use them like a spoon to scoop up food.
.. growing up my mom used to say, "What are you, raised by wolves!?" .. apparently, yes!
> Kaeshibashi
The preference is to use a separate pair of communal chopsticks that is not used directly for eating.
> Kosuribashi
I have heard that this one is because it's considered to be an insult implying that the chopsticks are low-quality. (That said, if your chopsticks are indeed low-quality, then avoiding splinters is probably preferable to then visibly plucking splinters out of your fingers.)
> Just proceed to eat some splinters, then? What is the good etiquette way to handle low quality el-cheapo chopsticks?
Well first of all the chopsticks are joined at the non-eating end, typically. So the splinters would be bothering your fingers more than anything.
It's rude because it insults the host, in a way. Anywhere that would care about you doing it should not be giving you the cheap chopsticks in the first place. If you're in a place that gives you them, they probably don't care about you doing it.
There are steel chopsticks (though not really common <-- only in Korea).
I think it's important to point out that these are good manners for eating with Japanese people, not good manners for eating with chopsticks. There is no requirement to emulate Japanese eating manners if you're not in Japan and not anywhere near a person raised in Japanese cultur. There are other cultures that use chopsticks that do not necessarily have these manners.
This is definitely true - but some of these are fairly universal, or at least that is my understanding. I believe the 'no sticking chopsticks upright in rice' one is shared between Japan, Korea, China, etc. for example - it looks like funerary incense/joss sticks in all three due to the shared aspects of their cultures, for example.
The disposable wooden chopsticks in Japan don’t splinter (they’re higher quality and cost more than the ones we have in the US).
That’s why you don’t need to rub to get rid of splinters.
Well that certainly depends on the establishment. I’ve picked out plenty of splinters here in Japan.
The disposable wooden chopsticks in Japan don’t splinter
If that was always true, there wouldn't be a word for it.
I've been given some pretty gnarly chopsticks at roadside places outside the main metropolitan areas.
Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China. Seems like islanders, due to their reliance on trade, naturally get specialized and autistic about their craft so they can have a comparative advantage, and their obsessions carry over into stuffy traditional practices.
>Always interesting to see the analogs of island vs continental culture when comparing UK <-> America and Japan <-> China.
when America was settled/founded by Britains, etiquette had not been standardized in GB either so the differences are due to parallel development, not island vs continent. That probably holds even more for differences between Japan and China.
I counter with the American swap-the-fork-hand-after-you-cut thing. Diabolical.
As an American, I don't think I have ever seen anyone do this.
It's like you've never met someone who's left handed
Really? You hold the fork with your dominant hand, and cut with your non-dominant hand?
Really? You don't know any Naval Academy graduates then.
That’s just mental. Does my head in when I see it.
American raised by a Brit here, and I was literally just doing this during lunch out. I consider the upside down fork just plain torture.
What stuffy traditional practices does the UK have?
Would you mind sharing your insight? I'd be interested to hear!
> To place one’s mouth against the side of a dish and push food in with the chopsticks.
I've seen people eat noodles and broth (e.g., ramen) like that a million times? What am I missing? How do you properly eat noodles and broth?
It's not a taboo, it's just not considered good manners in formal contexts.
But it's fast and efficient, which is why people do it anyway.
So how does one eat ramen-like dishes in formal contexts?
They don't. Ramen is a poor-persons-food and probably not being served at formal banquets.
Slurp the noodles and drink the broth?
That taboo is simply wrong in many contexts. Watch Tampopo after reading this and it can correct for a lot.
I'm curious for a native's opinion on how important these are. The etiquette I was taught growing up in the US is a mix of:
Of these several dozen "rules" for chopsticks, how many actually fall into the last category of things that actually matter?People told me to avoid placing chopsticks upwards in a bowl before I even went to Japan so that is the only one I’d keep in mind.
Given how many of these are clever tricks that I learned from seeing Japanese people eat, like aligning the chopsticks quickly in a plate or cleaning waribashi from splinters by rubbing them together, I’d not take all of these seriously, but it’s cool to know nonetheless.
Honestly, I don't even really see 'don't touch shared food with used silverware' followed if a place doesn't provide specific serving utensils.
Yeah it's a pretty flexible rule, but it's at least something to think about, unlike a lot of other "rules" that you're allowed to completely disregard for your entire life. I probably was too strict in describing that last bullet point.
Holy cow! I thought there was going to be a list of 8 of them... There's like 40!
And I thought the Inuit had a lot of words for snow.
I wonder how many of these words a typical Japanese person can list off the top of their head.
I lived in Japan for nearly 6 years and found that concern for faux pas such as these for hashi (chopsticks) are way way overblown. I used at least one thousand disposable pairs of chopsticks in Japan and never had the desire to smooth them -- they are higher quality than Panda Express offerings. I knew about this "taboo" prior to arrival and it was simply irrelevant. Avoid the obvious symbolic references to makura gohan (bowl of rice offering to the deceased) at the end of your meal and you are probably golden. If you have kids in Japan, gaijin passing food with chopsticks to their children in a restaurant is going to be seen in a neutral or even sympathetic light. The Japanese may silently judge but they rarely sneer or harass. If you spend a lot of time with modern Japanese families you might be surprised to discover Western stereotypes of Japanese taboos are sometimes outdated and even incorrect. They are very aware that foreigners will not understand all of their customs, and many of those customs have decreasing importance as their culture evolves.
Passing food by placing it directly on someone else's plate or bowl is fine. The taboo is specifically about two people holding onto the same thing at the same tine with chopsticks, the way cremated bone fragments are placed into the urn at kotsuage.
Other than that, I agree. It's kind of like trying to apply Emily Post's etiquette to TV dinners: many of these "rules" would be viewed as prissy by Japanese and some (eg. giving your miso soup a swirl with your chopsticks before drinking) are very, very commonly ignored.
>holding onto the same thing at the same tine
i see what you did there
The main one for me is not putting your chopsticks on top of the bowl rim or putting the chopsticks sticking up from the rice. Those are both intuitive natural actions for me. In the US I rarely see chopstick rests so I'm always wonderting what to do with them when I'm not using them.
is there a word for using them as hairsticks?
"kawai"
If they serve me slop with only a few good bits, I'm doing saguribashi.
> こすり箸 Kosuribashi
> To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.
Stopped reading there. If you're handing me crappy chopsticks to eat with I am rubbing them together first.
Exactly, too many times have i heard from some snob not to rub them, who later had to pull a splinter out of their finger.
Namidabashi and Furibashi seem like a contradiction