Chopsticks

When you`re shocked by another culture, it can be easy to forget that they are shocked by you too.

"What are you doing?" a table of nine year olds asked me at lunch today. They had been staring at my right hand for at least three minutes, and this was a final outburst of indignation and confusion.
I looked at my hand.
"Is it wrong?" I said.
"Yes," they told me emphatically, and then tried to do what many people have tried to do over the last year: get me to hold chopsticks correctly.
I couldn`t do it. Whatever way I have trained myself to use chopsticks might be wrong, but it`s the only way I can pick up anything at all. Once I`ve finally got the right grip on it I can`t do anything at all with them; worse, I get cramp and have to keep putting it down.
"Like this," they told me, holding their hands out.
I did what they were doing.
"No, like this."
I re-did what they were still doing.
"No, like this."
And then they laughed because my little finger kept popping up, all perky, and did exactly what it does when I`m drinking tea too: makes me look extremely ridiculous and unintentionally posh (it`s actually a tendon thing, and not a class thing, incidentally).
"It`s hard," I exclaimed eventually, and they looked at me with total bewilderment.
"Why?"
"Because we don`t have chopsticks in England."
Silence. And then, eventually:
"None?"
"No." (I omitted eating in a Chinese restaurant or Japanese restaurant: that does not count.)
"What do you eat with, then?"
"A knife and fork."
"Ehhhh?" They looked at each other. "A knife and fork?"
"And spoon," I told them. "Here, here and here." I showed them where they would be on the table.
"Eeeeehhhhhhhh?" they said again. "How do you pick things up?"
"You cut them with a knife and use a fork to pick them up. And you don`t take bites from something too big, you cut it up first, and you don`t pick your plates up to eat, or drink out of the bowls."
There was astonishment, and then one of the boys bent down and stuck his face in his soup.
"Like this?"
I laughed. "Not quite. You use a spoon."
"Ehhhhhh?"
"And there`s usually one plate of food, not lots."
"But where does the rice go?"
"On the plate with the meat."
"On the same plate?" they all said at the same time. "What about vegetables?"
"Same plate. One plate. With a knife and a fork and a spoon."

I took so much pleasure from their faces that I almost continued and told them that we often left food on our plates too, but didn`t want to shock them irretrievably.

"England is weird," one boy announced finally, and the little girl sitting next to him slapped him.
"That`s rude," she told him sternly. "Holly Sensei is English."
"Well she`s weird too, then," he said, and got slapped again for his indiscretion.

I`ve spent the last year struggling with chopsticks and different plates and slurping loudly enough and picking things up with my hands and eating every single last rice grain, and yet it never occurred to me that it would be a shock to Japanese children if they realised it was any different elsewhere. A shock, I think, that they probably needed.

"I want to go to England," the little girl announced suddenly as I stood up to go and brush my teeth (another Japanese custom ingrained in me as normal, now).
"Me too," another one said.
"Me too."
"Me too, even if it`s weird."

And thus knives and forks had done what teaching them English had never quite managed; to make them interested in another country.

It`s great, learning about another culture. But I need to remember to take my own with me sometimes too.