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.

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 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 did try to explain to her that it was more related to my being left handed than my attempting to emulate European behavior. It didn't seem to make much difference to her.)

This explains the difference. The European method seems the most optimal.

On the other hand, I don't think Americans ever pick up food with their fork and switch the loaded fork to the other hand, especially if the food is scooped, not speared. A lot of food would be dropped in the process.

As a non-conformist, I taught myself to use my knife in the non-dominant hand so that the fork is used in the same hand regardless of knife usage.

Or, it could be what my English son-in-law does, he uses his fork and knife, in different hands to aid in pushing food onto his fork. (He's right handed, not that it matters in this case.)

Most people have settled into Estuary, which has split into a high/corporate/media Estuary-tinged dialect, and low street Estuary. The BBC has its own special neutral version.

Fifty years ago the difference between upper class/BBC/RP and street English was almost hilariously obvious. Watch a BBC show from the 50s and 60s - even something like Dr Who - and everyone is speaking a unique RP dialect that doesn't exist any more.

In media, you’re quite correct - it has become rare bar presenters who are now in their 80s or older.

We just grow up with it because it’s how our parents and the parents of our friends speak.

If you want to change your accent you can, of course, get elocution lessons but most Brits do not. We just have a large variety of accents of which RP is one.

I didn’t have lessons for it and I don’t know anyone else that did. It’s just how we speak.

How so?

You don't have to follow them, but you do you should be ready to accept the consequences of your choice.

In the area I grew up in, caring too much about useless aesthetic stuff like “elbows on the table” would have a social cost.

Mind you, I'm not saying that standards must be followed. I am just saying the same thing I tell my kids:

- the standards are there, wishing they didn't exist doesn't invalidate them

- the reason rules and standards came to existence might or might not be applicable to our current context, but some people will expect you to follow them regardless.

- If a rule or standard seems silly to you, make your best attempt at understanding why people would still follow it. (Chesterton's fence)

- You are free to not comply to some rules, but always be ready to accept the consequences of your decisions.

- What your friends are doing or not doing is not reason enough for you to change your behavior or choices.

But not observing them does. There are standards no one in the world follows anymore. They may still “be there”, but are only used for mocking purposes.

> If a rule or standard seems silly to you, make your best attempt at understanding why people would still follow it. (Chesterton's fence)

The corollary to that is that anyone who rebukes anyone else for not following a standard must be able to explain why it exists. “Because it’s rude” it’s not good enough, explain why it’s considered rude.

Not quite. My original comment was in response to "I see people violating rule X anywhere, even though I was told it was 'wrong'".

All I am saying is one shouldn't be basing their behavior solely on what they see others "getting away with".

I had a friend who came from a working class culture where social aspiration was measured by tiny nuances, like whether someone put milk in their tea before or after pouring it.

Outside of that culture these nuances were irrelevant. Middle and upper class people had a completely different set of etiquette markers - as well as more or less obvious displays of wealth - which the working class aspirers were oblivious to.

Standards are not absolutes.

I dated many foreign girls and it was always fun to discover the cultural differences.

There are similar faux-pas in France but, really, nobody with an ounce of common sense cares. You like your red wine cold as I do? Someone will maybe mention that you will be loosing some aroma znd that's all. You add sugar and ice? This is probably not a drink for you and you will get some laughs but that's all.

I eat my starters after the main meal in the company restaurant, nobody cares.

You are there to have pleasure, this is not West Point

One of my favorite alcoholic drinks is port + ice, which it sounds like the only difference here would be that wine + sugar + ice would be much weaker in terms of alcohol content.

Fun fact: "chambrer le vin" i.e getting (usually red) wine from storage temperature to "room temperature" comes from a time where said room temperature was well below 20 degC (more like 13-15 degC), not the comfortable 20+ degC that people like to enjoy these days.

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.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/1026+CD+Durgerdam/@52.3790...

Jarvis Cocker-san.

I don't think an elderly person who lives in a different country is actually a good guide to modern practice.

Also, I was asking about Japan. I believed my Chinese teacher (in China).

> For context - it's a way of saying "death to your family" or something akin to that.

Nothing so specific. It is felt to resemble something you'd see at a funeral.

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,_...

Is the issue that people have difficulty cutting with their left hand? Because if you can the process of eating is pretty efficient: hold with fork, cut with knife, move food on fork to mouth …

Absolutely a non-issue in reality obviously. But nowadays I do hold my cutlery "properly" as a result. To me it now feels natural to bring the fork to my mouth with the left hand. Or the right one, really, but I default to holding it in the left.

  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. 

Strange that the wiki implies you set the knife down after each cut.

>Bread is always served and can be placed on the table cloth itself

This is extremely rare, to the point where I can't remember the last time I saw it. Is bread really.. always served?

> In the United Kingdom, the fork tines face upward while sitting on the table.

Tines down isn't uncommon in the UK either

>if a knife is not needed – such as when eating pasta – the fork can be held in the right hand

I mean it can be, but its fairly uncommon

>it is permissible to place a small piece of bread at the end of the fork for dipping

Its also 100% fine to dip bread in a sauce with your fingers. Putting bread on a fork if you've licked the fork and then dipping the bread would cause everyone to hate you, so *don't do this*

> I mean it can be, but its fairly uncommon

So the norm is that if you're eating one-handed, you use your non-dominant hand? That seems really counterintuitive to me; is it because you're so used to having the fork in the non-dominant hand that it feels awkward the other way? Which hand do you use when eating with a spoon?

If people don't even know it, it's not part of the culture.

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.

Add an s and it gets a little better.

What do you think "reading" means?

1. Upper class stopped being formal because formality stopped being a signal of upper class.

2. Middle class stopped having social gatherings in general.

So, like, "it is a part of the culture" in the same sense as traditional outfits are a part of the culture - most people have very vague awareness, nobody really cares.

The upper classes in the UK regularly practice tone policing, where legitimate dissent is waved away as uncouth, even though what they say and do is far worse in private, and sometimes in public.

If you're looking for human dignity, I don't think this is its natural home.

This phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting, because what one considers basic etiquette another considers a theatre. The end result is often that people gather in order to perform the spectacle of manners rather than use manners to facilitate a social gathering.

Poland has honorifics that are probably on par to those in Japan, but since the language is difficult to learn and frankly speaking nobody cares about Poland, barely anyone even knows this.

Also lots of corporations prefer "american style" approach of just refering by name (even to the CEO), so this dissapears.

Probably could write few pages about this, but nobody would care to read.

On a side note, I find interesting is that Czech language still naturally uses that plural form we abandon due to popularity of pan/pani forms.

> I'm interested in learning more about this!

It's very simple, actually.

For strangers, you use the third person and the title « Pan » or « Pani » (Sir or Lady). You avoid pronouns, « The Lady has forgotten the Lady's purse on the table ».

For friends, you use the t-form ("ty", thou), and use a diminutive rather than the full name. « Johny, you've forgotten your bag on the table ».

For work colleagues, you traditionally use « Pan » or « Pani » with the full form of the first name. « Mister John, the mister's bag is on the table ». This is perceived as old-fashioned, and is increasingly being replaced by the t-form.

The v-form has fallen into disuse, as it was promoted by the Communist regime.

(The old-fashioned honorifics still exist, but they are only used in administrative correspondence: the only time when you're "the respectable gentleman" is when you need to pay taxes.)

You left out most of the interesting things.

For example the vocative case is partially dissapearing. Someone from Finland can actually understand this topic, since Finnish has multiple cases - more than in Polish language (meanwhile English has one case and if we try very hard we can squeeze something similar to a case - so let's say it has two).

The grammar is changing in many ways (for example, the inanimate masculine is being replaced with the animated, kroić kotleta), but this was about honorifics.

Supposedly in Finish language you retained this difference and it can be heard in some words e.g. "raha" ("money" in Finish?).

Personally I never "heard" it - sounded as a regular "h" sound for me.

Reminds me of an episode on youtube of How The British Upper Class Live | Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over where the presenter eats her eggs "wrong", much to the dismay of her posh host who tells her (in his subtle British way) that she should "sort that out".

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.

_grape scissors_

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.

Just like the next term on the list does not prohibit eating food on the bottom but rather digging into the bowl instead of eating in top down order.

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.

That's hard to guess. There are three common measure words meaning "pair"; 副 is for "pairs" that are connected, like a "pair" of scissors in English, but 双 and 对 are basically identical in significance as far as I know.

> The waiter (who had a bit of a sense of humor) brought me exactly ONE chopstick.

Slightly unfair, since 一个筷子, beyond being semantically anomalous, is more or less ungrammatical too. If you actually wanted one chopstick, you'd say 一只筷子.

What kind of path did you take that taught you how to say 另一个 before you learned about measure words?

> What kind of path did you take that taught you how to say 另一个 before you learned about measure words?

The self-taught kind. :)

But next time, keep your findings for a thread related to the topic of LLM wonders, not when it's unrelated, such as chopsticks.

That made me chuckle

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 always under the impression this was the polite thing to do.

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.

(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.

Rendaku, i.e. the voicing of the initial consonant, happens in the native Japanese words (i.e. not in the Japanese words of Chinese origin), in most cases when they are a part of a compound word and they are not the initial word. This serves indeed to distinguish a sequence of unrelated words from a compound word.

There are exceptions when rendaku does not happen, but typically whenever a word like hashi becomes a part of a compound word it will be voiced to -bashi.

"H" is a special case among the consonants, because in old Japanese it was pronounced as "p", which is why it is voiced as "b". Later, in initial positions the pronunciation was changed to "f" and even later the pronunciation was changed to "h". The "f" pronunciation has been retained only before "u", like in Fuji. In non initial positions, the original "p" has become later "v" and even later "w".

These pronunciation changes happened after the creation of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, so they were not reflected in writing. The orthographic reform that was forced after WWII has brought the written form of the words closer to the pronunciation, e.g. by writing consistently "w" where it is pronounced so. Before WWII, many words written now with "-wa-" were still written with "-ha-", a spelling that has been preserved now only in the particle "wa" (like the spelling corresponding to the old pronunciation "wo" has been preserved for the particle "o").

While the Japanese orthographic reform had some positive effects, in simplifying a little the Japanese writing, it also had the effect that for someone who knows only the modern written Japanese it is difficult to read the Japanese books published before WWII, where many different kanji are used and also their hiragana transcriptions are different.

I assume that this was actually an effect intended by the American occupation forces, as a similar policy was applied by the Russians in all the territories of the Soviet Union (except the Baltic countries), where they forced the native populations to change their writing systems to the Cyrillic alphabet, in order to make difficult for the younger generations to read anything dating from before the Russian occupation.

Well, there is a convention that syllables starting with h- are spelled with f- (in foreign transcription) if the following vowel is -u. There's not much difference in the pronunciation itself; maybe there was more of one when the spelling convention was set.

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.

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!

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 quick Google search will turn up hundreds of results corroborating this.

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.

There are people in Japan who are rude or who do not have as good manners or etiquette when they are eating alone!

If everyone followed all manners all the times they wouldn't really be encoded woould they?

    when you're ready to close your tab, you can make a small X with your index fingers

I suspect it mostly affects left handed people.

> 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.

Edit: In fact I think you're completely right - "picking out" something near the bottom of the dish does suggest that.

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.

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.

> 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.

More about politeness to other guests in the context of a shared meal than being picky (and probably also with some similar logic to the TCM theories of how and what to eat, and maybe giving face to the host).

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.

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.

I almost associate the cheapo reusable plastic chopsticks with some food courts or Matsuya at this point.

I have always been a little embarrassed by my own use of chopsticks. When I was three or four years old a waitress in a Chinese restaurant helped me figure out a way to hold them that worked for me. Long story short, I am in my 70s and I have very effectively been getting food efficiently into my mouth with chopsticks my whole life - with horrible style.

Huh, this is something that I did consistently, believing it to be good etiquette.

  こすり箸 Kosuribashi:
 To rub waribashi (disposable chopsticks) together to remove splinters.

It is definitely not appropriate. If you break the chop sticks and use them correctly your fingers will never touch the surface where there are splinters.

I was once at a table with someone who was eating tomato soup by putting the spoon into their mouth, bitting it, and then pulling the spoon out. I was losing my mind listening to it.

Dip, ting, dip, ting. Dip, OUCH!.

They chipped their tooth. They chipped a tooth eating tomato soup.

How rude is it? When the food is not well prepared for chopsticks it’s really useful. But I do see why it’s rude, because it does imply that the food is not quite right. The Chinese restaurants in my country seem to have a problem making properly sticky rice.

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.

Also, the at-distance interaction between two tools requires much more dexterity than making your hand meet your mouth. The latter you should be able to do with your eyes closed.

I wouldn't switch from a fork to a spoon to eat the peas.

Other vegetables are available. I'm not judging.

Well I don't personally mind, but this would be seen as poor form in the sense of the original article. You're 'supposed' to kind of spear them onto the end of the tines using the knife.

Also, with the scoop method, if the peas are hard enough, I would think they're at great risk of rolling around and off the fork. If I were going scoop style, I'd have to mash or at least flatten them a little first to prevent this.

No wonder robotics is hard.

    > "No wonder robotics is hard"

!!! (Serious) To stand chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice. This is taboo, as it is the way rice is presented as a Buddhist funeral offering.

edit: Gemini makes great infographics https://imgur.com/a/V2D9VlM

Does it mean without food?

They piece through the ashes of a cremation and pass them between each other?

I know the modern style of conveyor belt cremation is a bit impersonal.

It’ll take me a while to process this.

> 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.

> 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"

At a Chinese restaurant, you're not given more than a small bowl of rice anyway. There is no way to "be left with large amounts".

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.)

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.

That’s why you don’t need to rub to get rid of splinters.

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.

> To take the tips of the chopsticks in one’s mouth.

Sometimes I'm having a hard time avoiding that. Apparently I need more practice.

(Unless you want to come off as imitating a Rakugo storyteller. If you do, then go ahead and use them as a talking prop. But maybe make it clear that you’re not eating with those ones, so people don’t worry you’ll flick sauce at them!)

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.

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...

I spent months learning how to use them properly in secret and finally deployed my skills when I thought I was pretty good. She didn’t notice. I then realized she almost always used a fork. In high school and college their meals were always served hastily and the students always brought a fork or spoon. they would eat standing up and had maybe five minutes to get the job done. No time for chopsticks.

When her parents came out to visit us after we got married I frantically asked her advice about good chopstick etiquette. I very much did not wish to cause her to lose face. She didn’t give a flying fuck. I honestly think I married one of the freest spirits in Asia, which is not necessarily a compliment.

She said I was doing fine and literally refused to give me any feedback at all, incorrectly claiming she wasn’t even that good. In fact, I think she only started to resume using chopsticks because I ended up finding them useful and now far prefer them to silverware.

I ended up having to learn most of the customs by watching people in restaurants. Just learning how to set them down right took additional months because I noticed far too late that they set their chopsticks down in a sort of V shape which is much harder than one might expect. Also, I am left-handed, but taught myself to do it right handed on the theory of that would also help me not lose face in front of the in-laws. It turns out they are also highly unconventional and probably didn’t care about my chopstick use one way or the other.

When we had kids, I would learn that Asian children who don’t learn to use chopsticks represent another way to lose face. It results in titanic power struggles within the family and makes everyone miserable. It’s a little like forcing kids here in the USA to eat their vegetables. By this time I had learned of her disinterest, so neither of us bothered to teach them. All of our children naturally picked it up with no apparent effort, including one who is very severely developmentally disabled.

I often get the sense that foreigners getting stressed about (or feeling pride in) how well they use chopsticks is a weird kind of orientalism. Because, like, who cares if someone shows up in a western restaurant and uses a spoon instead of knife to saw through something, or grabs a big hunk with a fork and takes a bite, leaving the rest on the fork? Maybe you wouldn't do it if you were having dinner with the queen, but any other context nobody cares. I'm sure parents still try to teach their kids to eat polite way, and maybe even feel a bit embarrassed if their kids show themselves to be less well-behaved than the neighbors', but that's a universal thing so, eh.

The thing I find interesting with orientalism is that it has a mirror in chauvinism from the other direction, both sides reinforcing the idea that there is something special about the cultural norms of people from East Asia in particular. It's almost as if there is a deliberate effort to reify cultural differences in a way that feels counterproductive.

I think these forces are especially noticeable living as a migrant to this part of the world, in that you sometimes find people gushing over you for being able to use what is actually a pretty unremarkable set of utensils or occasionally shitting on you for not knowing an obscure bit of etiquette that locals rarely perform. Either way it's just another form of the "western people like this, Chinese people like that" discourse which at best is vapid and at worst straight-up racist. I don't think it really helps to build a common sense of humanity.

Anyway, I feel like this kind of article is representative of the problem, in that it serves to create anxiety that there is some secret etiquette that must be performed in order to not be seen as an uncultured barbarian. Again, I have no experience with Japan so maybe they really are just That Damn Serious about how they use their chopsticks, but I doubt it. At least for me it was quite reassuring to find that - outside of the folks who really did hold chauvinist and/or racist views - most people in China cared no more about how I ate than how anyone else ate, and that the range of what was socially acceptable eating for all people was wide enough to make it clear that these sorts of articles tend to be either deliberately divisive or out-of-touch.

OK I agree completely. You will see atrocious manners in an average bar there. But my in-laws are brilliant scientists and thoughtful, gracious people. My mother in law is my hero. If I can reduce any friction in her life I will. Likewise when they visited us they were always closely observant of my behavior.

I think some of what you are characterizing as chauvinism or Orientalism is what I view as courtesy? I could very well be wrong on that one or misinterpreting you.

I think the confusion may be in a situation (regardless of culture) where one knows that a loved one’s family has a high regard for courtesy and manners, and you’re willing and eager to please them, sometimes this desire could be mistaken by others for an obsession or “reification” of the specific culture of the family.

I have enjoyed the politeness of the comments from you both and appreciate your courtesy!

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?

But it's fast and efficient, which is why people do it anyway.

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.

i see what you did there

    - 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)

Most of these are only for formal settings. Honestly, I haven't even heard of some of them. Aside from Tatebashi (sticking chopsticks in rice), they’re mostly avoided for hygiene reasons. As for Nigiribashi (clutching them in a fist), it just looks a bit strange for an adult to do.

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.

See, I can make up dumb shit too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_manners_in_North_America

I wonder how many of these words a typical Japanese person can list off the top of their head.

Also wondering how many of these apply in a Chinese setting or any other chopstick culture. Are there a different set of taboos?

> 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.

hold the chopstick however you like. so long as you don’t drop things unintentionally it’s fine.