Japanese Chopsticks

Looking for handling the Japanese Chopsticks art whether you are an expert or beginner, you will find the pair of chopsticks that suits you in your Japanese Temple collection.

What is better than enjoying a typical Japanese meal like sushis or ramen in the Japanese way with the ideal chopsticks!

Chopsticks also called "hashi" in Japanese, are cultery in Asian countries. Originally, chopstcisk were used as kitchen utensils in China back to 1600 and 1200 BC. However, due to an economic crisis, Chinese people could not offer to have iron cutlery becoming to expensive, so people start to make wooden chopsticks. With time, chopsticks became very popular in Asian countries with a shape adapted to their own culture.

 In Japan, chopsticks shape is around 20cm with a pointed catch food sharp at the end unlike other Asian chopsticks. For some western people, handling chopsticks is an inexplicable feat. With some trainings and lunches you will be able to cut, mix, roll, drain and separate your food!

Your Japanese Temple store offers various choice of chopsticks, some wooden choptiskcs with sober design, others with the worked handles or decorated with Japanese patterns. To complete your Japanese tablewear set or to offer to someone, Japanese Temples gives you the the possibility to get your favourite chopsticks in a box of five chopsticks pairs.

How to use Japanese chopsticks?

1. Hold your dominant hand loosely. Place the first chopstick in the valley between your pointer finger and thumb. Balance it on your ring finger.
2. Place the second chopstick in the valley between your pointer finger and thumb along with the first chopstick, but rest this one on your middle finger instead of your ring finger.
3. Use your thumb, pointer and middle fingers to grasp the second chopstick a bit more tightly.
4. The first chopstick (on the bottom) remains more or less stationary. The index and middle fingers do all the heavy lifting with the second chopstick. Lets have a demonstration. (Our refrigerator was pretty sparse. So it’s not like you need to use chopsticks for this particular task, but it’s going to have to be the grapes). Using your index and middle fingers to move the top chopstick up and down, open up your chopsticks.
5. Close them over the food. Remember to keep your hand loose but still maintain good control over that chopstick. You’ll really be tested when picking up heavier pieces of food.

 Some cultural rules to respect when eating with Japanese chopsticks:

Do not use chopsticks to push or prick food.

Never plant your chopsticks vertically in your bowl of rice, nor pass food to someone from chopsticks to chopsticks and even less cross their chopsticks. All these gestures are reserved for the worship of the dead and the ancestors in Buddhism. Making these gestures at the table would then be a sign of bad omen or misfortune.

Chopsticks are only used for eating, so other gestures should be avoided such as licking them, using them with a toothpick, drawing with them or even flying over dishes with their chopsticks without deciding what to take.

Now you have these few main rules in your mind, you can enjoy a good ramen or a sushi platter in the rules of Japanese culinary art.