Last night, I was having dinner at an izakaya with my GF’s family and relatives. After we had finished the main dishes, my GF’s talkative second cousin made her way over to me and asked me a question, one that I’m surprised that she hadn’t asked before: “Can you use chopsticks?”
“Yeah, that’s easy,” I said.
“Show me. Pick up that shrimp.”
At that moment, all conversations in the room went silent and all eyes were on me as the family wanted to see if I, the foreigner, could actually use chopsticks. That, of course, made me nervous. But I just took the chopsticks and picked up the shrimp like I usually would.
As my GF’s cousin watched, she became amazed. “Wow,” she said. “You’re so good at using chopsticks! You’re better than us! How did you learn?”
”Oh, just from my friends when I was living in Hawaii,” I said, kind of embarrassed about the situation, because I assumed they were just being nice, saying that I was good even though they knew I was terrible at using chopsticks. But then, they started showing me their chopstick-handling skills, and it was obvious that I was as good or better at using chopsticks than they were. I was shocked. Now I can say that I’m better at using chopsticks than some Japanese I know.
I can’t take all the credit, of course. Thanks goes to all my friends in Hawaii that showed me the art of using chopsticks.
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