I was shocked to find it's a faux pas to rub disposable chopsticks to remove potential splinters. I was taught this is what you're supposed to do with disposable chopsticks.
It's rude if it's a nice establishment, as it conveys your belief that the chopsticks are of low quality. So that's what you're signaling with that. If everyone already knows they are cheap (e.g. disposable), then have at it.
You come to my house to have food. I serve the food on obviously unclean dishes. Is that not rude as well? Do you just use the obviously dirty, nasty, used dishes out of not wanting to appear rude?
Do I just use chopsticks that will put splinters in my mouth just to not appear rude?
In your metaphor the equivalent would be that you see that the chopsticks have splinters and are cleaning it
But everyone I met who does splinter cleanup does it _every time_ even without a cursory inspection. So the metaphor is… maybe more apt that you are cleaning a plate despite not seeing whether it’s clean or not first
Why don’t they just serve proper chopsticks then instead of break apart ones? Cheapobashi - serving your customers disposable chopsticks when they’re paying for a good experience.
I once witnessed a local admonish another (younger) local for exactly that at a bar. He replied with a bratty "Not my fault they're using crappy chopsticks..."
I ate at a very nice restaurant (think The Menu) in Kagaonsen last week and the main course was served with lacquered chopsticks but another course was served with disposable chopsticks and the waiter actually broke them and rubbed them together for me. I think the social faux pas is making a show of doing it.
You know you're at a fancy restaurant when the waiters have an entire dish emulating what the poors are eating. Reminds me of a restaurant I used to really like in NYC called 'Peasant' :-/
I had a friend from Korea who thought it wasn't necessary/was improper to rub chopsticks together. This wasn't a matter of offending the restaurant, since we were eating in a university cafeteria.
I always rub mine together, but I suppose it would be interesting to know if you didn't, how often would something bad happen? Is it more likely to hurt your mouth or your fingers?
The splinters come from where they break apart and there's not really any reason to have that part of the chopsticks touching your skin.
But you move away from break apart disposable chopsticks in Japan long before you get to high etiquette dining. In my experience, basically every restaurant in Japan that isn't of, like, fast food tier, provides actual chopsticks instead of disposable ones.
I had mostly disposables but they were actually lathed wood. The crude rectangular cut chopsticks are terrible -- usually not for splinters, but they often break imperfectly, leaving you with two sticks with different lengths.
For those cheap chopsticks, I've found the best way to break them is to grasp them at the very tips, then move your two hands away from each other briskly without twisting, just straight apart. I haven't had many break badly since I started doing this.