Some of these definitely require more explanation. Like, how do you even eat with them if you can't put the tips into your mouth? Just toss the food upwards and catch it?
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I live in Japan and see most of those every day. Passing things between chopsticks (and, as I found out the hard way, by extension two sets of chopsticks used on the same dish), and stabbing them vertically into something are the two to care about.
Can we just get a shorter list of what it's OK to do?
I know a couple are explicitly tagged as serious, but those aside, how many are real faux pas, and are there some that are generally ignored in more casual settings?
I have seen many versions of these over the years, and most of them do not give a why, or an alternative.
I'd say most are ignored in most settings.
Having spent 2 years teaching English in my late 20s, most of these rules are "common sense", just like "Don't spit your gum out on the bus floor".
Passing food between chopsticks? Come on - someone giving you food will put it on your plate. I never had that happen. Who the heck washes their chopsticks in their soup? Utsuribashi is a ridiculous one - nobody is policing your intake.
The serious ones are pretty real though. Funeral settings may set food out for the dead, and you see the chopsticks set that way too.
This is really informative, thank you for posting. Besides the serious ones and a few obvious ones (at least for people living in Japan, like 刺し箸 or the other 指し箸), I have been guilty of a few of these (looking at you こすり箸 and 橋箸).
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