TIPS FOR TRAVEL IN JAPAN
10 Surprising — or Not — Things You Must Never Do in Japan
Consideration For Others is the Key
Published in
4 min readApr 21, 2022
Things Not to Do in Japan
1. Pour your own drink.
If you are eating alone, it’s fine. But if you are with other people, pouring your own drink can make you look like a drunkard.
Etiquette requires that we pour each other’s drinks.
2. Pass food from one to another using chopsticks or stick your chopsticks into rice.
At Japanese cremations, after the body is burned, the loved one’s bones are passed using chopsticks, one by one, from one family member to the other until they reach the urn, into which they are delicately placed.
You can see why passing food with chopsticks in the same manner would be frowned upon.
If you want to share food, use your chopsticks to move the food from one plate to the other first.
Sticking them upright into your rice also resembles a funeral ritual. Put your chopsticks on the chopstick rest when taking a break from eating.
