JAPAN: Trying to eat sushi and not look like an idiot

Left: Sushi bar with spigot for hot water.

I am horrible with chopsticks. In the US, I ask for forks and knives in Asian restaurants and sometimes eat sushi with my hands. Here, I don’t want to advertise my gaijin moronic table manners, but as much as I try to hide, my chopstick faux pas reveal my inner sushi clown. I hate wasabi and don’t know how to ask which sushi on the revolving sushi trays don’t have the green spicy element. Instead, I painstakingly try to remove the wasabi with my chopsticks from the rice. I take off the raw fish, scrape off the wasabi and put the fish back on. Well, by then I have ruined the consistency of the rice and when I try to eat the sushi, the rice falls apart and falls onto my plate. Now, I truly feel like an idiot and I bet the Japanese around me are quietly laughing at me.

One of the small sushi places I go to has a spigot for water by the revolving sushi tray. There is a small glass jar with green powder next to the soy sauce container. I see the man next to me pour some of the green powder into a ceramic cup and fill it with the hot water from the spigot. I am guessing that this is green tea, but I’ve never seen green tea powder like this. In my Tarzan-like Japanese acquired from my Lonely Planet guidebook, I point to the porcelain and ask if it is green tea. The waitress and the man sitting next to me smile. Yes, I have uncovered how to make green tea and warm me up from the Tokyo cold.