10th January 2022
Chopsticks are tools used for eating in some eastern Asian countries. They were originally cooking utensils1 and they spread out from China about 2,000 or 3,000 (two or three thousand) years ago.
Chopsticks gradually started to be used as eating utensils. They especially suit holding sticky rice which is eaten a lot in China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Chopsticks are also used to eat noodles in these countries as they also are in other countries such as Vietnam.
Chopsticks in Japan are made from wood or from bamboo and are generally shorter than chopsticks in other countries and have a finer2 tip3. They are sometimes also decorated with beautiful designs. Japan also makes chopsticks different sizes for different people. Chopsticks made for women are shorter than chopsticks for men and chilrden’s chopsticks are shorter than women’s ones.
It often seems that Japan adds extra things to products after getting the original product idea from other countries and this seems true for chopsticks too. As well as having different sizes, some chopsticks, especially children’s ones, have grooves4 near the tip of the chopstick to help the chopstick hold on to food. People in Japan also use chopstick rests which other countries don’t really use. These rests are used to keep the tip of the chopsticks from touching the table when they are not in your hand.
The chopstick rests may be related to a feeling of hygiene5. Hygiene may also be connected to the popularity of 割り箸 (waribashi) in Japan. These waribashi are disposable6 chopsticks that you throw away after using only once.
Waribashi are cheap wooden chopsticks that are stuck together at one end. You often receive them with meals in cheap eating places. You split7 them before eating.
They might be hygienic but they are not environmentally friendly. Throwing them away after only using once is a waste. Due to waribashi not being environmentally friendly, the word マイ箸 (maihashi) was born. ‘Maihashi’ means ‘your own chopsticks’ that you can take with you to events such as festivals. You almost never hear of them now.
One of the reasons it seems is hygiene. People think they are unhygienic it is said.
There are some rules for using chopsticks. For example it is not good etiquette to take something directly from a main shared dish, such as a hotpot and put it in your mouth. You should put food that you take from the shared dish on to your own side dish first before you eat it. Also you should not leave chopsticks resting in a bowl. This is related to death. These are two rules but if you’re reading this and know of other rules, you could tell someone about them if they ever wanted to know.
Apart from eating and cooking, chopsticks are also useful for other things, including cleaning and making crafts. Regarding cleaning, people sometimes use them to pick up pieces of food that have fallen into inaccessible8 places. Maybe there’s a piece of food that has fallen behind the cooker and you want to get it without it touching your hands. Again you could also think this is connected to hygiene or people’s idea of hygiene.
2. fine
<Example sentences>
■ That paper is very fine. It is very high quality.
■ The baby’s hair is so soft and fine.
■ Small birds have such a fine bone structure.
■ I couldn’t see easily through the fine rain on the visor of my helmet.
3. the ‘tip’
<Example sentences>
■ The tip of her nose was red in the cold winter air.
■ Do you want me to buy you a fine tip pen or a thick tipped one?
■ I stood on tiptoes to reach the packet of food. / I stood on the tips of my toes to reach the packet of food.
■ That family live at the very tip of the Izu Peninsula.
4. a ‘groove’
<Example sentences>
■ The tyres that people use on their cars in winter have deeper grooves than the summer tyres.
■ Before CDs, music was on vinyl records, which were round like CDs but they had grooves on them.
■ Over the past thousands of years the rain and snow has created grooves on the rocks of the mountains.
5. ‘hygiene’ / ‘hygienic’
<Example sentences>
■ Two people drinking from the same bottle is not hygienic.
■ He never washes his hands or hair. His personal hygiene is terrible!
■ The food in this restaurant is great but I don’t know about the hygiene. It feels a bit dirty.
7. disposable
<Example sentences>
■ Almost all nappies* are now disposable. Before they were made of cloth and the adults washed them and used them again and again.
■ The nurses all use disposable gloves. They have to change them every time they see a new patient.
■ We took disposable paper cups, plates and bowls with us when we went camping.
* in American English ‘nappy’ is ‘diaper’
8. inacccessible
<Example sentences>
■ Look at that house across the river. You can’t get to it by car. It’s really inaccessible. It’s only accessible by boat.
■ The birds built their nest high, near the tip of the tree, where it was inaccessible to animals that wanted to eat the eggs.
■ The top of the mountain is inaccessible in winter.
■ Are there any do’s and don’ts when using chopsticks? What’s bad etiquette?
■ Do you use chopsticks for anything else apart from eating or cooking?
■ Can you eat sushi with your hands or do you have to use chopsticks?
■ Do you use only wooden chopsticks?
■ What is ‘maihashi’?
■ Do you enjoy using chopsticks?
■ Do people use chopsticks to eat any dishes in your country?
■ What do you think of the sticky rice in Japan?
- ‘utensils’ means things that you use to help you prepare food or eat food. For example for preparing food you might use cutting boards, kitchen knives, wooden spoons. Knives, forks and spoons are examples of eating utensils.
- in this sentence ‘fine’ means delicate and narrow.
- ‘tip’ in this sentence means the end of something long and narrow. For example the ‘tip’ of a pen or ‘tip’ of your finger.
- in this sentence ‘groove’ means a long, narrow, deep line.
- ‘hygiene’ means keeping yourself clean and keeping the place around you clean so that do do not get sick.
- ‘disposable’ means something that is thrown away after using it once or only a few times.
- in this sentence ‘split’ means to divide into two pieces.
- ‘inaccessible’ means a place or thing that is difficult to get to, difficult to reach.