I’m asian and so I’ve been using chopsticks for a long time but I use the fat, almost uniform width ones like at chinese restaurants, not the tapered ones Japanese use. So, I don’t have the dexterity with Japanese chopsticks that is needed to use them as all purpose utensils at the table. The hardest thing for me is skillfully cutting things with chopsticks. I’m practicing but still not quite there yet. 

About numbers 2 and 3, if you are among friends DO THEM, at least some of them. I have been studying abroad in Japan the last four months and while it is technically bad etiquette, among friends almost all of these happen. Pointing I have definitely seen, as well as the taking from community plates with the eating end (I’ve been fed from someone else’s chopsticks before, so germs actually don’t exist in Japan). The only ones I haven’t really seen are waving them around and moving plates with them.

Now if you are not among friends pay attention and do as they do, my host family did the community plates but not all families will.

Most of the time (when being polite) people will use the opposite end of the chopsticks to take food from community plates or there will be another set of chopsticks set aside for doing so.

Just wondering, is the stigma surrounding left handed people overlooked for baka gaijins?

I fail by number one. I can’t use chopsticks at all!  I hope to be visiting Asia soon… It will be very embarassing. I am clumsy enough that I struggle with a knife and fork sometimes, chopsticks are simply overwhelming. :(   Also..getting drunk for no raisin??

“that travelling to a new country is a free pass to get super wasted in public for no raisin” – intended?

I have always been confused about stabbing and cutting. If it’s rude to stab your food how do you cut it without stabbing? Don’t most people stab the two chopsticks in the middle then separate them to cut through the food.

These バカ外人 installments are HILARIOUS!!! Make more please!! You should make one about visiting the shrines and temples. “How to be a baka gaijin at shrines!” These are so great, I enjoy them profusely.  :D

I think the keyword there is “when being polite.” i.e., in formal situations. Most of the time I get an “erai, erai!” from friends when I turn over my chopsticks to pick up food.

I was at an izakaya with a group of Japanese people and one lady had her finger pointed and her mouth half-open, all ready to mock me for using my chopsticks backwards, before she realized what I was doing. -_-

The “another set of chopsticks for taking food,” I think, is a much more common sight, especially at enkai/party situations where the food is meant to be communal.

I agree with the commenter above. Doesnt matter what country, it depends on location, and willingness to seek these things out. I lived in a rural village in England where there was a chinese takeaway, yes, but one that was itself very westernized, so chopsticks weren’t exactly the standard. If I wanted asian food properly I’d have seek it out by travelling into the city- why bother? Then again, my family aren’t the sort of family that go out to eat at restaurants or get takeaways often- its generally reserved for special occasions only. So I guess its also down to how you grow up and what you are exposed to as you grow up.

Usually it is when people come to visit… and they go out with you. Then the horror begins. They do it all wrong while you do it right. The worst part is when people then group all the gaijin into a group and just assume what one person does is what we all do and you have to work doubly hard to make up for it later and prove you aren’t totally inept. x.x

Does Hashi have his bathroom slippers on? D:

Strange…O_O

Always.

While on the edge of a bridge?

Really the chopsticks thing (grabbing from communal plates), I gave up on flipping my chopsticks around and using the other end to pick up stuff.  Reason: I’ve seen about 2 Japanese people do it, and innumerable amounts NOT do it…so meh.  

 Agreed, heaps of people in Japan don’t do this.

That would be a confusing situation…O_O
Especially if they were talking about hash browns(In Japanese of course).

I’m trying to learn how to use chopsticks correctly.  I have Asperger’s Syndrome so everything that involves fine motor skills is extremely difficult.  I’m afraid the Japanese won’t appreciate the fact that I’m left handed.  The whole rice bowl in the left and chopsticks in the right is impossible for me.

I think the biggest thing to take away from being foreign and at a dinner table is to know your limits and just try.  More or less, Japanese people will usually comment on how well you can use chopsticks regardless of actual skill.  And like John said, give it a shot and if it’s too much, don’t be ashamed to throw in the towel and ask for a knife and fork.  Similarly, just know your limits to drinking.

Yeah I think the only people I saw doing it were fellow gaijin, but then again we were around college age Japanese kids pretty much the whole time.

In the Midwest, every Chinese restaurant you ever go to will give you a pair of chopsticks.  (The level of quality varies considerably, depending on the price bracket.  At restaurants you can actually afford, they’re generally the uber-cheap wooden ones.)  The customary thing is to take these home as a souvenir.  Children will often goof around trying to eat with them, but after a couple of minutes of that their parents invariably tell them to “stop playing and eat” — meaning, put the chopsticks down and use the fork. I suppose if a kid were actually able to use the chopsticks in a manner that resulted in a significant amount of food making it into their mouth their parents might let them do that, but I’ve never seen nor heard of such a thing happening.

So, yes and no.  Chopsticks themselves aren’t unusual at all.  Actually eating with them, however, is essentially unheard-of.  I’ve never seen it done.

I’ve run into plenty of Japanese people at various restaurants that could use this advice as much as any foreigner. I was at a buffet the other day for lunch and some dude just kept harassing the poor waitress. T.T

My host family taught me it’s normally to talk with your mouth full at the dinner table (I do it when I visit, though it still kinda grosses me out…) and my ex’s (Japanese) mom never learned to use chopsticks right. She would use them to kind of shovel food in, even more awkwardly than in the drawing. So they were legit impressed that -I- could manage after just a year in Japan. lol

 Getting drunk is the greetest.

Probably should have had an entry on drinking miso. I can see a lot of ways that could go wrong for a baka gaijin.