You probably already had the opportunity to join the Japanese cuisine, but you still have questions about how to eat sushi, then this information will be useful to you. Here are a few tips and talk about the true traditions of Japanese table etiquette.
If you visit a sushi bar in Japan, you need to know the basic traditions of table behavior. When you enter the restaurant, a waiter or hostess will surely meet and greet you and say the welcoming word "Irassyimase." It sounds approximately like this and means a greeting and an invitation to come in. It is not necessary to answer with a smart Japanese word, just nod in response. Sitting in a real sushi bar, you can see the whole process of cooking your dishes. At the same time, you can order sushi directly from the cook, and the waiter will serve you drinks. If you ask the cook what is better to choose from the menu, then he will be happy to help and advise you.
Remember that you can’t ask a cook for fresh sushi or not. Once you have visited this restaurant, you should not doubt the quality of the dishes, otherwise it will be a little offensive. You can talk with the cook during the preparation of sushi on any topic, but you should not distract him for a long time. If you are interested in how to eat sushi, look around and pay attention to how other visitors to the restaurant do it. Before you place your order on the table, you will be offered a “mistake” - a heated damp towel. It is intended not only for you to be able to wipe your hands before eating, according to Eastern philosophy, thanks to this process, “mistake” absorbs all the negative emotions and negative feelings that have accumulated in us. After use, the towel should be rolled up into a tube and left in the same form in which it was served.
When you start eating, remember that you can eat sushi with chopsticks or even with your hands. The only exception is that only men can eat sushi with their hands. Before eating, bamboo chopsticks need to be divided among themselves and taken in hand. If you do not know how to hold sushi sticks correctly, ask the waiter about this and he will be happy to show you. Sushi is not customary to bite off, slices are prepared so that you can easily swallow them at a time. You must also consider how to eat sushi with the drinks that you ordered. The Japanese usually drink sushi with green tea. If you drink sake, then you need to know that the Japanese have not decided to drink it along with dishes containing rice. It is customary to drink sake with sashimi. But sashimi is by no means allowed to eat with hands, but only to use chopsticks.
Try not to transfer sushi to each other with the help of chopsticks, as for the Japanese it reminds a funeral ceremony, it is better to give your neighbor a plate, and he will choose what he wants. It is very important to know that it is not customary for the Japanese to stick sticks in rice. After you learn how to eat sushi, you need to figure out how to use ginger and wasabi. Ginger is used before moving to another type of sushi to cleanse the taste buds, and wasabi is a seasoning that makes dishes spicy. If you eat soup, you can eat it with a spoon, or you can drink it first, and then eat the remaining thick with chopsticks. The soup, which was brought covered, must be covered again at the end of the meal. Now you have learned how to eat sushi correctly and remember one more important rule that leaving food on a plate is indecent, try to order as much sushi as you can eat. It is not always possible to do everything right when visiting a sushi bar. The Japanese even joke that children need to show how to use chopsticks incorrectly using the example of foreigners. But the Japanese have great respect for foreigners when they see that they are trying.