Eating

It pays to be hungry in Japan, you should eat every scrap, it is considered bad manners to leave even a grain of rice. Here are a few more tips which will make your meal much more enjoyable.

If you are eating a rice dish you should hold the rice bowl in one hand and scoop the rice into your mouth with the chopsticks. Never spoil the rice by pouring soy sauce or the like over it as rice is meant to be a pure food.

Sushi on the other hand should be eaten with soy sauce, but only take what you will use. You must pour the sauce onto a plate then dip your sushi inn. With the last pieces of sushi soak up the remaining sauce leaving a clean plate. You can use your fingers or chopsticks to eat sushi and you could offend the sushi chef if you remove anything or add wasabi or anything other than soy sauce to the meal. Remember the chef is also an artist.

You have to respect the sashimi chef too, he isn’t too keen on you using too much wasabi or ginger on his prized dish, you should only use a little, the flavour should be all about the fresh fish and rice not the condiments.

Miso Soup the delicious soy and seaweed soup is best drank straight out of the bowl like a cup you may catch the floating pieces with your chopsticks.

Noodles are your time to make a little noise, slurping is not a problem as long as you don’t sound like the farmers pig, just do it as much as the people around you and you will fit in just fine, but don’t burp that is offensive. The secret of eating tasty noodle is scooping them in with your chopsticks while sucking them down. If no spoon is provided it is still polite to finish the soup at the bottom of by drinking like a cup.

Curries are best eaten with a spoon, it is ok to use your chopsticks but you will find a spoon does a bit better job.

It is very rude to leave your chopsticks vertically in a bowl of rice or anything else for that matter. The Buddhist funeral ceremony does this and no one else should. The ceremony also passes the cremated bones to different people via chopsticks so you shouldn’t do this with food either.

Other than eating ice-cream or standing at a food bar counter it is considered bad manners to eat anything while standing or walking in the street. You should be seated when eating. Fast food like hamburgers etc are all eaten while seated, you never see anyone walking down the street eating a burger or drinking for that matter.