Japaneses Dinner Etiquette of 1970

“JAPANESE PLAN-It is etiquette to eat as quickly as possible, but no one starts until the host gives the word. You talk before and after the meal.”

A Japanese meal is a feast for the eyes and has often been called a spectator sport. Variety is the spice of the cuisine: tiny dishes of assorted shapes and sizes and vegetables cut in shapes of maple leaves or flowers and floating in clear soup. Chopsticks rest on a tiny porcelain fan, challenging the visitor to prove himself a social flop.

You'll most likely have sukiyaki, the safe meal to serve foreigners, whom Japanese consider unenthusiastic about raw fish, paste of sea-urchin eggs or broiled eel. Sukiyaki consists of paper-thin beef slices, leeks, yam noodles, Chinese mushrooms, bean curd, spinach and other vegetables, all simmered on the table in a sugar-soy sauce. The food gets better as the juices mix, and it is the perfect party meal, since each person adds and subtracts meat and vegetables to please his personal palate. Japanese dip sukiyaki in beaten raw egg, which cools and coats it deliciously. You don't eat until your host gives the word, and you talk before and after the meal.

Finally, your host takes up his chopsticks and poises them for attack. Itadakimasu (let us begin) is the signal. It is etiquette to eat as quickly as possible, but this is easier said than done if you are inexperienced with chopsticks. Your host will proudly teach you the knack, and most food is bite-size for easier capture. On the other hand, Japanese do own knives and forks nowadays.

Scented Washcloths 

The closest thing to napkins is o-shibori, or scented washcloths, which are iced in summer and steaming in winter. They are served in bamboo baskets before the meal. One is expected to eat noisily. Noodles should be sucked and slurped, and soup bowls raised to your mouth to scoop in vegetables with chopsticks and to drink. Fresh fruits, usually served for dessert, are eaten with miniature knives and forks. The sweet dessert comes before dinner, with the green tea in the western room.

You will have to fight off your hosts when you're full. Negative answers are considered rude in Japan, so instead of “no, thank you,” say, “It's splendid, but” (kekko' des), and you will have to refuse three times. Polite Japanese turn something down twice before accepting.

Don't get up and start clearing the table, for helping is not your role. Praising your hostess's meal will reduce her to embarrassed giggles behind cupped hands, and her husband will deny vehemently that she is a good cook, since it is ill-mannered to praise your family in front of others. She probably won't eat at the table with you; her place is waiting on guests. 

Flavored Toothpicks

At the end of the meal, flavored toothpicks are passed in a tiny lacquer box and operated behind hands held like fans in front of the mouth. By this time, your legs will be paralyzed; but your host will be most understanding, for he will encourage you to stand up and unwind.

Then cigarettes are passed-one brand is called Hope and another, Peace along with ashtrays resembling miniature spittoons and containing water. This is sensible in a land of dust and wind and where wooden houses are floored with tatami.

Conversation will depend on the English ability of your host family. Your greeting of “How are you?” may provoke a blank expression. Most Japanese start studying English at age 13, but they learn it as a dead language, as we approach Latin.

They memorize obscure rules of grammar, but cannot cope with American idioms. Many of their teachers have never visited an English-speaking country or even spoken with a foreigner. – The New York Times, 197

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor to the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia