[imagesource:here]

That philistine in the image above is about to make a terrible mistake.

Once the rice on that makizushi makes contact with the soy sauce, it will be ruined, desecrated, banished to sushi hell along with the unfortunate soul who dipped it in the first place.

Brace yourself, we’re about to cover an extensive list of things that people aren’t supposed to do while eating sushi, and yes, it extends past the soy sauce to just about everything that you once held to be true.

Sushi and the preparation thereof can be traced back around 12 000 years. It evolved over the centuries, as The Guardian notes, and people began to eat the rice as well as the fish and add other things until it became what it is today – a key part of Japanese culture.

Here’s where you’re going wrong.

Eleni Manousou, a head chef at a famous sushi joint, Nobu, says “in my opinion, you need to eat sushi with your hands”.

Her opinion on soy sauce and wasabi below:

“Try not to use too much. Wasabi is also wrong; it overpowers the flavour. And you should eat sushi with the fish placed on your tongue first, rather than the rice”.

Fine, except I like the soy sauce and the wasabi and chopsticks, so I obviously went looking for something to back up my preferences.

Here’s chef Naomichi Yasuda, who agrees that the fish should be placed on your tongue first, but doesn’t have an issue with wasabi or soy:

The long and short of it is that for the most part, this means nothing – how you enjoy your food is entirely up to you.

The real danger here is that someone is going to read this and become insufferable the next time you join them for sushi, as they bypass the soy and the wasabi, calling you out on your chopsticks between popping daintily held Tamaki into their mouth, using their fingers.

Sorry.

[source:guardian]