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Friday, September 10, 2010

Japanese Parody of American TV Shopping: Do Japanese Eat Potato Chips with Chopsticks?

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

I've read lots of weird things where westerners think that Japanese do not eat food with their fingers. Well, I've never heard of such a thing and wonder, if that were true, then why do Japanese people eat sushi with their fingers?

A woodblock print showing a woman using chopsticks

Well, I know people in India do not eat with their left hands (I will leave it to you and your imagination why)... But I haven't heard anything about Japanese people having an aversion to eating with their fingers.

The use of chopsticks in Asia goes back about 1,700 before Christ. I do know for a fact that the first record of chopsticks in Japan was found in an archeological dig that dated back at least 2,500 years ago. So we know that Japanese people used chopsticks at least that long ago. See Wikipedia.

Recently, I even had a person ask me if Japanese people eat potato chips with chopsticks. Now, while that may be a good idea, as chips are oily, I've never seen or heard of such a thing. Maybe they do as a sort of party game.


Or maybe the person who asked me this saw this parody on Japanese TV and thought it was real.



No. This is a joke. But, they do sell this product. I've seen it. So, while it is a joke, the product is real...

TV Shopping has become big on TV in Japan too and one can see these infomercials hawking all sorts of stuff everyday, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This one, though, is an attempt at humor to sell a product to kids, I think....

Thanks to: http://www.misscellania.com/

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Keywords: Chopsticks, potato chips, Mike Rogers, TV shopping, parody, Marketing Japan, Mike in Tokyo Rogers
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1 comment:

  1. MontyApril 11, 2011 at 1:29 PM

    This thing is a copy of another potato chip device (that is not as goofy looking, no fake hand) that has been out for a while. It's not a joke. The point is to be able to eat potato chips at your computer without getting the keyboard greasy. I think Americans think it's a joke because they are used to shoving handfuls of potato chips into their mouths, and they think these things are too slow and inefficient. They haven't seen Japanese, who eat one potato chip at a time slowly, pausing a couple of minutes before the next.

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