Moving Picture

I just had the pleasure of watching a wonderful Japanese movie called Love Exposure. It's a 4 hour long epic about 3 emotionally damaged teens in Japan locked in a love triangle. Yu, the main character, is a misguided son of a priest who is doing anything to find his Mary (read Virgin Mary). The other parts of the love triangle are Yoko; abused by her father runs away with one of her father's many girlfriends, and finally Koike who was brought up by an over bearing father and is now the leader of a brainwashing cult.

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Chop Chop Redux

In a previous post (Chop Chop) I detailed a bit of Chinese chop stick etiquette. This post of course left out a huge portion of the chop stick using population; the Japanese and Koreans. Today I am comparing three countries, Korea, China, and Japan, each of which have their own style of chopstick and different etiquette.

Chinese chopsticks are the longest of the 3 styles of chopsticks and have a square end. The material they are made from is typically wood, however they have been made of many different materials from ivory to plastic. There is no definite answer to why they the are longest, but it is said that it is because the Chinese typically share their food. When they sit at the table there are many dishes in the middle and each person pulls a bit of food rather than piling everything they will eat onto their plate as in other cultures. The wider and longer chopsticks make it easier to move food from a bigger serving dish to a smaller eating dish.

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