How to eat sushi: the etiquette that matters, and the rules you can ignore

Most sushi etiquette guides online are lists of twenty rules written by people who have never sat at a counter in Japan. Half of those rules are real, a quarter are optional, and a quarter are invented. We live in Fukuoka and supply restaurants here with their plates and chopsticks, so this is the short version: what Japanese diners actually do, what chefs actually care about, and where you can relax.

The five things chefs notice

1. Eat nigiri in one bite

A piece of nigiri is shaped to be eaten whole. Biting it in half breaks the rice and leaves a wet half-piece on your plate, which the chef sees. If a piece is too large, that is on the chef; at a good counter you can ask for smaller pieces (shari sukuname, less rice) and nobody will blink.

2. Dip the fish, not the rice

Turn the piece on its side, or upside down, and touch the fish to the soy sauce. Rice dipped in soy soaks it up, falls apart, and drowns the fish. Anything already brushed with sauce (eel, anago, tako with nitsume) or cured (kohada, shime-saba) does not need soy at all. When the chef has seasoned the piece, eat it as served.

3. Do not stir wasabi into your soy sauce

At a counter serving nigiri, the chef has already put wasabi between the fish and the rice, in the amount that suits that fish. Making a green paste in the soy dish tells the chef you would rather not taste his seasoning. At a conveyor-belt place or with takeaway sushi, nobody cares; do what you like.

4. Ginger goes between pieces, not on them

Gari, the pickled ginger, is a palate cleanser to eat on its own between two different fish. Stacking it on top of nigiri is a Western habit that Japanese diners find odd, in the way that ketchup on a steak is odd. Not offensive, just strange.

5. Hands are fine

Nigiri was street food in Edo and was always eaten with the fingers. Chopsticks are equally acceptable. Sashimi is eaten with chopsticks. If you eat with your hands, the small wet towel (oshibori) is there to wipe them; use it before you start and between pieces, not on your face.

Chopstick etiquette that applies everywhere in Japan

• Never stand chopsticks upright in rice. It is how rice is offered to the dead at a funeral.
• Never pass food from your chopsticks to someone else's chopsticks. Same reason: it is how bones are passed at a cremation. Put the piece on a plate instead.
• Do not rub disposable chopsticks together. It suggests the restaurant gave you cheap ones.
• Do not point, wave, spear food, or hover over dishes deciding what to take.
• When you put chopsticks down, rest the tips on the chopstick rest (hashioki), or across the edge of the soy dish if there is none. Not across the top of a bowl.
• If you take food from a shared plate, use the serving chopsticks if provided; if not, the back ends of your own chopsticks are the polite compromise.

At the counter

Sit at the counter if you can; it is where the food is best and where the chef can pace the meal. A few habits that make the evening better for both sides:

• Order in courses, not all at once. Two or three pieces at a time, or ask for omakase ("I leave it to you") and let the chef choose. A typical progression runs from lean white fish to fatty fish to silver-skinned fish to cooked pieces, with tamago or a roll to finish.
• Eat each piece soon after it arrives. Nigiri is assembled to be eaten within a minute, while the rice is still body-warm and the fish is cold. Letting pieces sit while you talk or take photographs is the one thing that visibly disappoints a chef.
• Talk to the chef about the food; talk to the staff about everything else. Drinks, the bill, and directions to the toilet go to the floor staff. Questions about the fish go to the chef, who usually enjoys them.
• Perfume and cigarette smoke interfere with the food for everyone at the counter. Go light.
• Do not ask for extra wasabi or soy on a piece at a serious counter without tasting it first. You can ask afterwards; most chefs will adjust.

Rules you can ignore

These circulate widely and are either exaggerated or simply false.

• "You must eat the pieces in a specific order." The lean-to-fatty progression is sensible, not compulsory. Order what you like.
• "Never eat sushi with a fork." If you cannot use chopsticks, ask for a fork. Nobody in Japan will be offended; they will be surprised you tried chopsticks at all.
• "Do not put soy sauce on rolls." Maki are dipped lightly, like nigiri. Just do not soak them.
• "Tip the chef." There is no tipping in Japan. Thank the chef when you leave (gochisōsama deshita) and, if you want to give something, offer to buy him a drink during the meal, which is the traditional gesture at a counter.
• "Green tea must be drunk at the end only." Tea (agari in counter slang) is served throughout. Drink it whenever.

At home

Serving sushi at home has fewer rules than the counter but a couple of things make a difference. Nigiri goes on a flat plate, fish side towards the diner, two pieces per person per fish. Each person gets a small dish of soy sauce; a shared bowl means someone will dip rice in it. Wasabi is served on the side in a small mound, gari in its own dish, and everything sits on a long rectangular plate or a wooden board rather than a deep dish. If you are setting up for the first time, our sushi essentials collection has the plates, soy dishes and chopstick rests we sell to restaurants here; for the food itself, the professional guide to making sushi covers rice, nigiri and rolls, and the glossary of sushi fish explains what to buy.

Two words worth knowing

Itadakimasu before the first bite, said quietly to nobody in particular. Gochisōsama deshita when you leave, said to the chef and the staff. They are the beginning and end of every Japanese meal, and they cover a multitude of chopstick sins.