Using chopsticks
One of the things which many foreigners in Japan don't like is being called "GAIJIN." It sounds like "Sorry. You're not a member of this exclusive club, Japanese." The more they like Japan, the more it irritates them.
And another thing they don't like is being told,"You can use chopsticks very well. "I know more than one person who told me that every time they are told so, they retort by saying. "You can use a fork very well, too." I guess that they think being able to use chopsticks is not the privilege for only Asian people, and that they have been told the same thing over and over and they are already sick of it.
As for me, I remember I was excited when I ate meal using a fork and a knife when I was a kid. It was so exotic. The more Japanese culture became Westernized, the less special using a fork and knife became. Because I had seldom seen any Western people using chopsticks,at least to me it had seemed special that Western people can use chopsticks until I was transferred to the Tokyo office and saw Tom,who is from NY, using them. He told me that when he was in college, using chopsticks was a cool thing and many friends used them. I was kind of enlightened. "Oh, it's not our privilege!!"
When I came to the U.S., I actually noticed there are so many people using chopsticks to eat Asian food. I think these people are the people who can accept other cultures and that this attitude is very important to understand each other. I pay a lot of respect to those people.
But I notice a couple of strange things there. One thing is that many of them don't hold the rice bowl with their hand. At least this is a bad manner as far as Japanese food is concerned. (Same in Chinese food, I guess. Different in Korean food, I've heard.)
Another thing is this. "Do we use chopsticks to eat fried rice served in a plate? Don't we use spoon?" I think people in Hong Kong use a spoon when they need to eat fried rice from a plate,also, I'm not sure though. Eating rice from a plate is considered Western in Japan. It is not Japanese style. So we use spoon to eat fried rice. And it makes much more sense. Fried rice is crispy. It is hard to bring them from the plate to your mouth. 60% of rice grains are pulled back to the plate through your chopsticks by gravity. Those people are trying the impossible. It simply does not make sense. It looks awkward and ugly. Or they'd better be served by a rice bowl so that they can make the distance shorter by holding the bowl by their hand.
Yukari, who is Japanese, told me that when she goes to an Asian restaurant for lunch with American peers, she is given chopsticks and others are given forks. They sometimes exchanges chopsticks and forks so that she uses fork and others can use chopsticks.
Table manners are to make people look better when they eat and make people at the same table more comfortable. Usually table manners make sense. I can not help concluding that people using chopsticks to eat rice from the plate understand our culture only superficially though I still pay respect to them and I like them.
Keiichiro
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