Oct 182010
I’m back!
A while ago Darren Elliot raised a very interesting point on this site here. He pointed out that foreigners in Japan will often be lavished with compliments for being able to use chop sticks. This happened to me stacks of times when I lived in Japan. You mean, it wasn’t because I was stunningly deft with them? (Only kidding)
By: pulaw
I have a friend who was complimented in China on how fat he was looking. He was a little disconcerted. So I’m wondering, have you ever received any compliments in your travels that seemed a tad odd?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Karenne Sylvester and Theron Muller, BELTfree. BELTfree said: via @vickihollett Can you chopstick? \[…]
An interesting point about the chopstick compliment. I was giving a lesson to a student from Japan recently and she wanted to talk about why Americans were able to use chopsticks. She moved to New York recently and was surprised to see such widespread use of chopsticks among Americans.
One of the facts that came out in our conversation was that, in Japan, children are actually taught to use chopsticks in school. According to this student, kids learn to use them at home before starting school, but they aren’t really very good at it yet so they’re given instruction in school.
Perhaps the fact that Japanese children are explicitly taught to use chopsticks explains some of the wonderment that Japanese people always express at the ability of foreigners to just “pick it up”. Maybe they think of chopstick use as something difficult, because they learned it at a young age when their motor skills aren’t very well developed.
Or maybe they’re just complimenting us to be nice.
That’s interesting, Aaron! I didn’t know that (about school), although I’d definitely noticed that many Japanese people perceive chopstick use as pretty difficult. A former client, who’s Japanese, complimented my usage and then went on to say that I held the chopsticks correctly and that her own husband (also Japanese) doesn’t hold them correctly. So the common non-Japanese assumption that all Japanese people use chopsticks perfectly is also wrong…
A very sweet Taiwanese lady told me that I looked attractive despite being overweight, because my weight was distributed all over. Heh. She meant well!
Great to see you Aaron and Clarissa and many thanks for chipping in.
I need to ask a question. Do you think those compliments stemmed from real interest in westerners’ ability to deftly maneuver two sticks between their fingers or were they more like a social ritual – for example, like an American might say ‘I like your earrings’ to a stranger, or a Brit might say ‘Nice day, isn’t it’ when they want to initiate a conversation or keep one going.
I was very interested in Aaron, Clarissa and Vicki’s comments! I have lived in Japan for over a decade now and the fact that this kind of complement is so universal here has always intrigued me.
I think Vicki has a very good point: my own conclusion is that praising this sort of rudimentary accomplishment serves as way of bridging a gap and establishing personal contact with someone. There is regional variation, but certainly in the East and North of Japan (Tokyo etc.), people tend to avoid making casual conversation with strangers except in defined situations such as shops (shop assistant/customer) or bars/parties. An introduction is usually required in order to make a new acquaintance. In this way a face-saving distance is maintained.
This contrasts quite strongly with the UK or France, where people easily make conversation with strangers.
Another factor is that as Japan is traditionally a country of low visible migration (most Chinese and Korean immigrants have adopted completely Japanese names for everyday use), most people have had very little contact with foreigners and for this reason would like to establish some sort of personal contact with them.
An uncontroversial complement such as on the usage of chopsticks is therefore a good way for a Japanese person to ‘break the ice.’
It is also much more common to receive these complements from women than men, Japan being a strongly gender-differentiated society.
It is also common for foreigners to be complemented on their Japanese ability after using basic Japanese, for example ‘arigatou’ or ‘kudasai’ (‘thank you’ or ‘please give me’). These complements are also often used reassuringly in response to a grammatical or pronunciation mistake. It is said that when you stop receiving this complement you can be assured that your Japanese has improved!
This is just my theory and I would be very interested to hear other views. Is there any similar phenomenon in other Asian cultures?