Treatise of Manner

As I woke up late today, I did not get to prepare salad udon for Jun, therefore he suggested that we eat out today at Sukiya, a family restaurant serving food in large bowls to fill up one’s hungry stomach in an affordable price. Upon finishing our lunch, I had used the rice spoon to scope my miso soup and to Jun’s amusement he said, “You are a foreigner! Japanese uses ‘chopstick’ to drink miso”. In return to his statement, said, “You are Japanese”. We both laughed out loud.

Chopstick – A pair of thin wooden or ivory sticks used as eating utensils, especially in Asian countries is not a tool to be looked down as, in my humble opinion. This tool, age of 5000 years old was first used in China. Early Asians would retrieve the food from the fire using sticks or branches.

Subsequently, as the population grew and resources became scare, people would cut food into smaller pieces to save fuel because smaller portions cooked faster. Chopsticks became the utensils of choice partly because of the influences of Confucianism. Confucius had taught that, no knives are allowed on the dining table as the sharp tools remind people of slaughter of animals.

By 500 A.D, the use of chopsticks had spread to countries such as Korean, Vietnam and Japan. Japanese chopsticks are slightly different from the Chinese and the Koreans. Japanese chopsticks (7 to 8 inches long) are slightly shorter than their Chinese counterparts (9 to 10 inches long) and are typically rounder and sharper at the end of the end.

Even though I grew up eating dinners with my Chinese parents, my parents had never really emphasized on using chopsticks as our main tool to pick our food. On the other hand, Jun’s parents had strictly taught him and his younger brother the art of holding chopsticks since they were young. Picking up green beans with their chopsticks from bowl A to bowl B was part of the process of mastering the art of holding the chopstick as I was informed.

Nevertheless, no matter how hard I tried to control my chopstick with my third finger, it does not seem to work for me. Eventually, I ended holding my two rectangular sticks like how I would hold my pencil. Jun had expressed to me that holding the chopstick correctly is part of Japanese culture. Unfortunately, there are some Japanese who had failed to teach their children how to hold the chopstick correctly and the children ended up holding the chopsticks in the weirdest way and it’s a shame a its bad etiquette.

After he had said the above statements to me, I realized I should actually practice the right way to hold my chopstick in order to avoid bad etiquette on the table. The process of learning how to hold the sticks correctly will cause much frustration on me as I anticipated. In spite of my frustration, I supposed, at the end when I mastered the art of holding my chopstick, I will be praised for holding the chopstick correctly in the family and it will be a good example for my kids in the future.

Lastly but not least, it has been said that using chopsticks improves one’s memory, increases finger dexterity and can be useful in Chinese character printing and brush painting. There are superstitious revolve around the chopsticks as well. For example, if you drop your chopsticks, it’s a sign of bad luck. Whether you believe it or not, I agree that improving the dexterity of one’s fingers are definitely beneficial for one’s health.