Chopstickery Pet Peeves

I'll relate a story that actually occurred before I went to Japan, but it's fun nonetheless.

Between my junior and senior years of college, after studying Japanese in college for a year, I posted a flyer seeking a Japanese language exchange partner at Yaohan (now Mitsuwa), Japanese shopping center in Edgewater, New Jersey. A woman named Noriko answered my ad. During that summer, we got together periodically to exchange Japanese and English language pointers.

One day, Noriko and her roommate, who was also Japanese, invited me to their apartment for dinner. To eat with, they gave me warebashi, those disposable bamboo chopsticks, still attached to each other at one end, that you have to break apart to use. (Although this sounds tacky -- you wouldn't give your guest a plastic fork in the US -- it's actually common in Japan, because it's considered more polite to give someone unused chopsticks, as opposed to the ones you've been sticking in your mouth for a couple of years.)

I pulled apart the chopsticks and then started rubbing them together to remove splinters, as I had seen some Asian American friends do at school. As I rubbed, I asked Noriko, in as good Japanese as I could muster at the time, "Please tell me if I ever do anything considered rude in Japan."

Noriko and her roommate looked at each other and then Noriko pointed to my splinter-removing technique. "That's rude," she said. I felt like a dope.

Moral of the Story: Don't assume that Asian Americans know any more about Japanese etiquette than you do, just because they're Asian American.

Etiquette Note: One of my pet peeves is people who treat chopsticks like toys. You don't play with your knife and fork at the table, do you? If you want to practice drumming, get some drumsticks. Treat chopsticks like you would tableware: leave them on the table if you're not using them to eat. Doing otherwise is considered extremely rude.

My Other Chopstick-Related Pet Peeve: People who insist on using chopsticks in Asian restaurants because it's "more authentic" that way, even though they can't use them properly. Most of these people hold the chopsticks near the bottom, like a pencil. But chopsticks operate more like scissors. Imagine if you decided that, rather than using the handles, you would use the scissors by holding them near the tips of the blades. You'd lose the advantage of the lever-and-fulcrum principle on which chopsticks depend. You'd also look rather silly.

Even a fork works on the same principle. If you hold a fork down by the tines, like a four-year old, it doesn't work so well, does it? That's why adults hold forks at the other end.

Get your hands as far away from the business end of the chopsticks as possible and you'll have much more control and grabbing power. If you ever get Chinese take-out and they give you those disposable chopsticks in the red paper cover with the chopsticks instructions on the back, read the directions! They distill 5,000 years of chopsticks know-how into three easy steps. Chopsticks work much better as shown in the diagram. Trust me.

My Japanese friends are always amazed at my chopstickery. (Like the Japanese language itself, gaijin are presumed to be inherently incapable of learning to use chopsticks properly -- probably because most gaijin hold chopsticks like pencils.) They always want to know: How did you learn to use chopsticks so well? The answer: China House, Foster Village Shopping Center, Bergenfield, New Jersey, circa 1978.

I followed the instructions on the place mats.