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ETIQUETTE
FOOD PAGE
Chopsticks
Eating at a restaurant
Sitting techniques
Japanese dishes
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Since the rules about how to eat properly with chopsticks are so fundamental, we assigned them an own page.
You start eating after saying "Itadakimasu" and finish with "Gochiso sama deshita".
Slurping is done all the time while eating (soup, noodles, ...), but do not burp.
Blowing your nose in public, and especially at the table, is considered very rude.
Soya sauce is usually not poured over white, cooked rice.
When drinking alcohol you should remember that the Japanese pour alcohol into each other's cups, but one does not pour it into his or her own glass. You should always check if your friends' cups are getting empty, and then give them more. If someone wants to give you more to drink, you should take your glass and hold it towards that person.
How to eat ...
- ... Noodles:
Lead them with the chopsticks step by step into your mouth. Keep the distance between the bowl and your mouth small and slurp loudly.
- ... Soup:
Either you get a ceramic spoon which makes eating soups no big problem for an unexperienced foreigner, or you do not get one. In that case you drink the soup out of the bowl as it were a cup and fish out the solid stuff with the chopsticks. That's also true for eating noodle soups (e.g. Udon, Ramen).
- ... Sushi (Nigiri, Maki):
Give some soya sauce into a special little plate. The correct way of dipping nigiri sushi is to dip it up-side-down with the fish part into the sauce. Only a few kinds of nigiri sushi should be eaten without being dipped. Hands or chopsticks can be used for eating Sushi.
- ... Sashimi:
Give some soya sauce into a special little plate. Add wasabi into the soya sauce and mix it. Use the sauce for dipping the sashimi pieces.
- ... big pieces of food:
(eg. tenpura prawn, futo maki, tofu) Generally, you either separate the piece with your chopsticks, or you just bite a piece off and put the rest back onto your plate.
You may also be interested in the information page about eating at a restaurant.
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