Posted on 05/19/2006 1:48:06 PM PDT by lainie
TOKYO - Walk into any Japanese noodle shop or restaurant and chances are you'll be eating with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from China. But not for long.
In a move that has cheered environmentalists but worried restaurant owners, China has slapped a 5 percent tax on the chopsticks over concerns of deforestation.
The move is hitting hard at the Japanese, who consume a tremendous 25-billion sets of wooden chopsticks a year - about 200 pairs per person. Some 97 percent of them come from China.
Chinese chopstick exporters have responded to the tax increase and a rise in other costs by slapping a 30 percent hike on chopstick prices - with a planned additional 20 percent increase pending.
(Excerpt) Read more at sptimes.com ...
Point a point on them and a leather grip and you might have a stiletto in your hands. :)
That's my point in posting it. The AP declares it's an environmental story for the newly-eco-friendly China, but in fact it's just China putting the screws to Japan in a faux crisis.
That's what the article says. I don't get it, either. Are the Japanese really that histrionic?
Easier to build a rice tower, too. ("easier" is relative.. I still find rice-with-chopsticks next to impossible.)
Shovel!
Me, too. There's a spicy tuna roll somewhere with my name on it.
japan needs Wal-Mart and Costco. I'd be surprised if a set of chopsticks cost a dime.
Naw. The best ones are made from ivory.
More like a shiv.
Next question.
Well, it tends to add up with the volume: "the Japanese, who consume a tremendous 25-billion sets of wooden chopsticks a year."
25,000,000,000 * 10¢ *5 percent = $125,000,000
Plastic ones are slick and do not do so well with noodles. I have a set of bamboo sticks that I carry with me when I go out to eat. They are so much easier to use for noodles than plastic ones or forks and spoons.
The Vietnamese Traditional Sticks which only the mandarins ever used are special in that they are distinguishable from Chinese sticks. They are twice as long.
Most of the disosable sticks are not bamboo. They, in fact, are derived from actual trees.
American rice with sticks is not so easy as sticky rice but is still plenty doable. Actually the technique would seem to involve a bit of cheating. A bowl of non-sticky rice is held up to the mouth and the sticks are used in the manner of a rake. I never actually got the hang of that move but have become pretty good with picking up loose rice with sticks.
Such barbarian implements ars still frowned upon, except for torture of special prisoners.
Yes. We have wooden hashi for everyday use that are much easier to use than the lacquered kind. The lacquered stuff is kind of like real silver- we have it but it's only used for special occasions (my wife is Japanese).
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