• sheogorath@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yea I was like WTF. I went to Japan for work for several months and when the guys at Yokohama office took me eating sushi that’s what they did.

  • angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com
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    9 months ago

    My question is…how do you eat it within 30 seconds? I get that this type of etiquette exists in many different cultures but while I have never eaten sushi, I don’t exactly get how that one is even possible?

    • Ekkosangen@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      The context of this sign being in a sushi restaurant would be the key here. In higher-end, “omakase” sushi restaurants, you’ll be served a set of sushi piece by piece as the chef makes it in front of you. Typically you’ll want to eat it as soon as it is placed on your plate.

    • red_pigeon@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Of course, the one that you make.

      But if you are going to have it from a chef who says so at their restaurant, show some respect to their culture or else spend your money elsewhere.

      • LordSinguloth@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        It’s my food. I bought it.

        You don’t even know what my ethnicity is, don’t assume

        • red_pigeon@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          They are offering you a service and they follow a certain etiquette to have it, which is part of the service. If you can’t follow it, don’t be a customer.

          • LordSinguloth@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            If the business is going to belittle me cause I like soy sauce with my sushi or eat it in two bites then rest assured they will not be earning my business regardless.

            This stuff gets posted for white people to pretend they are virtuous over. We are laughing at you.

            What if I said you would be disrespectful of american culture if you ate a burger or steak wrong? You would probably laugh because that would be insane.

            • red_pigeon@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              You are assuming my ethnicity wrong, but I’ll go with it.

              If I go to a restaurant where they specifically say it is disrespectful to eat something in a certain way, I would respect that. Or if I don’t agree with it, I won’t have food at their restaurant.

              But I won’t go to the restaurant just to prove their way of eating is wrong. That is where your dumb attitude comes in. You are basically the equivalent of wearing clown clothes to a funeral just because you don’t agree with the etiquettes.

              Learn to live among people, or live in your hole.

              • LordSinguloth@lemmy.ca
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                9 months ago

                Don’t disparage the noble profession of the humble clown. It’s a worthy skill and no other artist is diminished in that way. To do so is to disrespect the culture of Greek and Roman from which the clown originated. These people are likely much more highly trained and skilled than you are. Or even I am.

                Honk

                Kind of funny that of course you go off about respect for other cultures when it comes to soy sauce on sushi but then turn around and denigrate an entire theater culture of two ancient peoples.

                You’re the bigot.

                • red_pigeon@lemm.ee
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                  9 months ago

                  Ok. I see now, you are just talking crap with intentional misinterpretation just for the sake of argument.

                  I’m glad that you understood my point though, otherwise you won’t take this stupid tangent. Try to apply it in life.

                  This is my last comment on this. Have a nice day.

          • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            If this disrespects your culture you have a fragile ass stupid culture that should be made fun of.

            • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              9 months ago

              Or, a culture that values respect over individualism. To each their own, but to me willingly eating food wrong to belittle a culture isn’t “fun”, it’s just stupid and rude.

  • MuchPineapples@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Unless you hand me a soy sauce pipette i’ll just dip the rice part in the soy sauce, thank you very much.

    And wtf is tiny tiny rice?

    • Shou@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think the tiny tiny rice is just sushi with very little rice. You can just see a smaller ball of rice under the fish bit.

      • qtj@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        Sashimi is usually just fish without rice. Sometimes rice is served as a side. I think it is meant for people that order Nigiri with little rice. They should just order Sashimi.

    • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      It’s quite possible they simply make their sushi smaller, depending where you live. Americans tend to make things a size or two bigger than a lot of the rest of the world.

  • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I always find such guidelines strange. Like I get the intention is to share some experience, but I rarely find the intended way of anything enjoyable at all. Even western traditional etiquette is weird. I shall hold the fork in my right hand and you can’t stop me aunty! My tea shall be hot juice! And my side shall be mixed with the sauce and meat into a big ol pile before consumption!

    • Noodle07@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I switch my knife and fork as I need to use them, knife in right hand when I need to cut and fork in right hand to eat, that’s all I know how to do 🤷

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        This one is hilarious to me. Let’s get you a spork

  • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I have never seen a sign saying I shouldn’t cut spaghetti, shouldn’t order pizza Hawaii, must split the potato with a fork, must have the knife in my right hand, or that the different cutlery for side dishes are mandatory.

    Might be different in a high class restaurant, but whatever.

    The only things signs in restaurants tell me is either “we only serve real meat, pussies can beat it” and “we did indeed pass the last inspection, here’s the grossest looking cartoon implying we shouldn’t have”.

    • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      None of this is mandatory, the sign says so. They’re social norms, not legal rules. It’s just saying “this is how this food is consumed in its original country, and breaking these norms may result in inadvertently offending someone or embarrassing yourself”, which might be something you’d like to know if you plan to travel to that country, or simply to try experiencing it in the traditional way - after all, most social norms have a hidden logical reason. Many of these exist simply to avoid making a mess.

      You’re free to eat however you want, however some cultures do place a lot of significance on food and how it is consumed. People in Italy will lose some respect for you if you try to order a Hawaii pizza, put ketchup on pasta, or use a knife improperly. The same goes for Japan and many other places. You’ll still be served and probably treated with superficial kindness, it just depends on how much weight you put on your experience vs that of others.

      • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I have read the sign, yes, but you have to agree that a sign saying these are big taboos and that it is seen as an offense to Japanese culture and to the chef if I broke them makes it seem like I will be blacklisted and kicked out.

        What I didn’t know was where exactly the restaurant is, the people in Italy can after all think whatever they want when the Italian chef is in Sri Lanka and happy to acclimate to local customs.

        So anyways, the restaurant is probably “Sushi Kisen” in California, it seems to be a high class one. Given that I am probably expected to identify a salad fork in an equivalent french restaurant, and I don’t sit in front of the chef in that one. They probably in a position to make these demands of their customers.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      It’s actually culturally appropriate to eat sushi with your hands if you want, making the turn over dipping easier. The only reason they say not to dip the rice side is the worry that it’ll soak up too much soy sauce and the fish flavor will be overpowered. But it’s not that big a deal.

      The passing food from one set of chopsticks to another is pretty strictly avoided in Japan though. They pass bones like that as part of funerary rites so it’s pretty closely wired into Japanese people as a cultural taboo.

    • iaMLoWiQ@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      But yes, you’re supposed to flip the nigiri 90+ degrees when dunking. It’s why I usually just stick to the sashimi. 9/10 chance I drop the chunk in the sauce. Can’t go wrong with that.

  • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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    9 months ago

    Yeah I don’t believe most of these are real “big taboos” and will continue eating food the way it is most tasty to do, regardless, thanks.

  • Chapelgentry@lemmynsfw.com
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    9 months ago

    When I lived in Japan (around 15 years ago, so etiquette might have changed since then) it was common to take the fish off of the rice and dip it in soy sauce, then put it back on the rice bed in instances where it was just placed atop the rice. Likewise, it was perfectly fine to mix wasabi into your soy sauce.

    I’ve done things that way since without any overt disdain, so I think these are generally good guidelines, but you can probably get away with doing some things your own way.

  • abbadon420@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    What’s with the wasabi and soy mixing? I saw someone do that recently for the first time. He looked very confident at it and I assumed i had been doing it wrong all this time. Why is mixing a thing suddenly?

    • sudo42@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I mix my wasabi and soy sauce every time. I also dip my sushi in this mixture rice-side down. I’ve never had anyone complain about this. If any sushi chef ever does complain I will just leave and never give business to that gas station again.

    • ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      It’s just personal preference.

      I learnt it from a chef in Japan in 2009, and I assume he had been doing it for many years at that time.

      Generally, that’s something done at a sushi train restaurant where the dishes won’t have wasabi in them already. I’m guessing these notes are for a sushi restaurant where the chef prepares the sushi specifically for each customer, so if you wanted wasabi they’d put it in the sushi itself.

    • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Why is mixing a thing suddenly?

      Definitely not new, people have been doing this since at least the 90s, when I was a kid.

      I also know plenty of Japanese people who say dipping the rice lightly into soy sauce is the correct method, so take literally any “sushi etiquette” guide with a grain of salt.

      Eat your food in whatever way brings you joy. Anyone that says otherwise is a pointlessly-gatekeeping idiot.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        9 months ago

        I found that I liked bibimbap in the stone pot, and ate it a few times enjoying it, before one time one of the Korean waitresses saw me eating it unmixed as it had come out, grabbed my bowl away from me, squirted a bunch of the hot sauce into it, mixed it aggressively for me with my spoon, and then handed it back to me explaining that that’s the way to do it and I should do it that way from now on. And, some of my friends were in Thailand and had some kind of dessert come out for them that was in the shape of a snowman, and they had a member of their party who was a big fat guy, and when the food came out all the wait staff started messing with him that he and the snowman were the same shape.

        I feel like Japan got all the politeness for the whole region rerouted to them and everyone else just kind does whatever kind of elbow-jabbing food-correcting baldness-making-fun-of thing that comes into their head to feel like doing at whatever time and if you don’t like it you can deal with that on your own.

        • h3ndrik@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          Hehe. Yeah, Bibimbap is Korean. So not exactly the same thing. And as far as I know the word literally means “mixing” and “rice”. I think it’s really tasty. And it comes pretty spicy in the restaurants I’ve had it (Which is far away from Korea.)

    • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      My Japanese friend did this. I always wondered if you was meant to (I seen them do it on Jackass).

      Since then I just assumed it was the right thing to do.