Habit with chopsticks

[AJBryant]

What, you don't have a LEFT hand?

Tony

[LordOfTheFlies]

AJBryant wrote:
What, you don't have a LEFT hand?

Tony

Wow, good idea
I completely forgot that I have two hands >__>

[Oyaji]

AJBryant wrote:
What, you don't have a LEFT hand?

What Tony said.


Or, you could put them down, drink some tea, then pick them up again, lining them up with both hands.

[Mike Cash]

Or people could just lighten up and enjoy their meal instead of upsetting their digestion by worrying about the intricacies of chopstick etiquette.

(Maybe this explains the frequency of ulcers and stomach cancer in Japan......)

[Ashurii]

I still think I hold my chopsticks in a completely awkward way, but I blame that one on eating Chinese with my mother since I was 7 or so with no one to correct me! Either way, it still tastes good going down (as Mike so eloquently pointed out to us).

[chiisu321]

A friend of mine knowingly uses them wrong. That's the way he was taught by family (he's japanese). He says it's how the true asians do. (it's a joke, don't get mad =/) It looks awkward.

[AJBryant]

I know Americans who use forks and spoons like shovels, and hold them in their fist.

That doesn't make is "correct."


Tony

[punkgrl326]

I've heard that it's required in Japan to eat with chopsticks using your right hand and that using your left hand is somewhat discouraged. Is this true and if it is will they accept it if you're a 外人 or not?

[keatonatron]

punkgrl326 wrote:
I've heard that it's required in Japan to eat with chopsticks using your right hand and that using your left hand is somewhat discouraged. Is this true and if it is will they accept it if you're a 外人 or not?

It'd be like shaking hands with your left hand.

That's the one you're supposed to wipe poop with, you don't want to touch other people with it or stick it in your mouth. :p

[Edit: I know shaking hands with the right hand began as a gesture to shows you won't grab your sword, so the two statements above are a bit unrelated... but even in western culture, doesn't right = food hand, left = poop hand?]

[Mukade]

Good gods, man! What are you doing with your poop!?!?!

[ss]

When I was a kid, I always asked my mom "How come they don't use toilet paper ?"

Eating customs differ among ethnic groups.
For some ethnic groups, putting food in their mouth with fingers is viewed as an ill-mannered. However, in Lion City here, I see Indians and Malays use a spoon along with their right fingers to eat (left hand is considered as “unclean”).
Like what Keat-san had said - “That's the one you're supposed to wipe poop with, you don't want to touch other people with it or stick it in your mouth.” They were taught from young to eat with right fingers. Even eating with fingers has a set of manners all its own.

As to whether it’s a requirement to use chopsticks with right hand, it really depends on individual. My 姐姐 was left-handed since kid, no matter how my mom corrected her, she just couldn’t write with right hand, and same thing, eating with chopsticks in right hand!

[keatonatron]

In most every culture I've encountered, the left hand is traitionally considered "unclean", coming from the simple fact that 500 years ago they didn't have decent toilet paper. Of course it's pretty much irrelevant today, but the various customs associated with it still stand.

[Mike Cash]

punkgrl326 wrote:
I've heard that it's required in Japan to eat with chopsticks using your right hand and that using your left hand is somewhat discouraged. Is this true and if it is will they accept it if you're a 外人 or not?

"Accept it"?

Good Lord, what are they going to do? Snatch your meal away from you and not let you eat?

When I get "advice" on how I'm "supposed to" eat my food in Japan (almost uniformly from other foreigners, which alone is reason enough to avoid them), I usually tell them off. I went to a yakiniku frequented by a good friend of mine in Kawasaki and the mama observed me consuming my meal in a manner other than that according to Hoyle. She proceeded to give me a lecture, which I stopped short thusly:

"Whose food is this?"
"Yours."
"Who is paying for it?"
"You are."
"Who went out and earned the money to pay for it?"
"You did."
"Then shut up and let me enjoy my meal however I see fit."

Nothing is more tiresome than foreigners who worry about the "right" way of eating a meal in Japan, and there is nobody more uninformed, ignorant, or aggravating in their zeal to disrupt my meal.

A little hint that will help you thin folks as you go through life: Fat folks are generally jolly, but don't f*ck with us when we're eating.

[caroline]

Well, being left handed, I use my choptisticks with - guess - the left hand : and either people in Japan or japaneses elsewhere are too polite to even seem to notice, or they don't care, but - as opposed to other countries where eating with left hand is clearly "wrong" and it's made know to you - it has never aroused the slighest interest from anyone.
So, I've come to think that it is not an issue.
And I'm too old to change.

[Mike Cash]

Phrase of the day for Caroline: 大きなお世話 (ookina osewa). Say that to anyone who gives you crap for using your left hand for your chopsticks.