Learning to Bow

The name of my current read is Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan by Bruce Feiler. My friend Heather was kind enough to loan it to me. I started reading it today on my train ride to meet my conversation student, Osami. I found it so entertaining that I was laughing out loud on the train, receiving curious looks from my fellow travelers. The book is about an American man who spends one year teaching English and American culture at a rural school in Japan and consequently his encounters with the Japanese culture. One of my favorite sections so far:

Several weeks into my stay, Mrs. Cherry Blossom [yes, that is her real name, translated into English]...hosted a welcome party for me along with some of her friends. As the party began, spread across the table at the center of her living room floor was a marvelous assortment of traditional Japanese party fare: heaping trays of sushi; bowls of pickled vegetables, tofu, and potatoes; plates of salads and compotes. In front of me, however, she had discreetly placed a small plate of egg salad sandwiches with a knife and fork tucked beneath a napkin. Moved by her thoughtfulness but by then quite completely accustomed to dining with chopsticks, I plucked a pair from the center of the table and joined with the other guests in prying nuggets of food from the trays and putting them into my mouth.

I had not lifted the first bite of raw fish halfway to my lips when the whole conversation stopped dead and everyone turned to marvel at my unimaginable skill.

"That's amazing," swooned a lady to my left as she focused her glasses on my fingers.

"So skillful," said another.

They were so genuinely impressed that they beckoned our hostess from the kitchen to witness this display of manual dexterity by the foreigner. She came rushing to my end of the table, dripping her serving spoon into my lap, and exclaimed, "Can you use chopsticks?"

I laughed out loud again on my train ride because this exact situation had happened to me just a few minutes prior. I've been meeting Osami for lunch every week for 3 months now. The location of our lunch depends on our mood, though pasta and Italian tend to occur frequently either because he enjoys the cuisine or thinks I won't enjoy something else, or a combination of the two, I'm not sure. (Those "western style" restaurants tend to have forks and knives on the table instead of chopsticks.) Today we ate at a steak restaurant, although I'd stated the Japanese restaurant would be fine.

This was a very Japanese style steak restaurant, chopsticks carefully arranged on the table. As our multi-plated meals came out to us, Osami was shocked as I picked up my chopsticks, broke them apart and dug into my salad.
"Ohh!" he said, quite surprised. "We can get a fork, it is no problem."
"Oh no," I responded, "this is fine," and ate away. He just kind of stared at me - "You can use chopsticks? You learned to do that here [in Japan]?"
"Nope, I used them in America, too, at Asian restaurants." This really distorted Osami's world. I tried to tell him I can't hold the chopsticks the Japanese way, so I must have learned from a Chinese restaurant, but he was very impressed.

While this wasn't the first time I'd used chopsticks in front of Osami, it might as well have been.