Experienced chopstick users, when presented with a disposable pair of chopsticks packaged in paper at a restaurant, know how to fold the chopstick wrapper into a "chopstick rest." This (if you haven't seen it before) serves as a place to rest the tips of the chopsticks when you're not using them, keeping them off the dirty table. Unfortunately for late-comers to the chopstick like me, a Caucasian, this Origami-like trick is baffling.

So the idea is to print diagrammatic instructions, with dashed lines and numbered steps, directly onto the chopstick wrappers, so that anyone can follow the directions and make a nice chopstick rest. I think there are serveral ways to do it, so you could have different instructions on different wrappers.
-- crawdaddy, Dec 13 2002

IMDB: "My Favorite Martian" http://us.imdb.com/Title?0056775
What my mental image of bliss and the chopsticks reminded me of. [Pharaoh Mobius, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Dragon Chopstick Rest by Pete Farina http://home.comcast...diagram/dragon.html
If you'd print that on the wrapper, that would be either a humungous wrapper or very small print. [jutta, Apr 30 2005]

Kim's Page o' Chopsticks http://www.kmoser.com/chopsticks/
It's probably out there somewhere [jaksplat, May 01 2005]

I am a blackbelt in origami - bliss you'd look real neat with them stuck into your bun! BTW thats what we call hair screwed up into a tight little japanesey ball on the top of ones head (sorry)
-- po, Dec 13 2002


*gets the mental image of bliss with a chopstick sticking out on either side of her head*
Guess that would make you "Our Favorite Halfbaker," [bliss]. =)
-- Pharaoh Mobius, Dec 13 2002


Oh! I had no idea this was so widespread a trend. I was in a restaurant with three other people, two of whom spontaneously built different chopstick rests - to me, it became a competetive engineering project to pass the time, and I was surprised that nobody commented on our constructions, seeing how we'd all done something so outlandishly geeky.

Simple constructions are trivial - just about any form you can scrunch a wrapper into will have a few valleys that the chopsticks can rest on; more elaborate constructions are possible. Given the very pleasant slope of this learning curve, 'twould be a pity if there were to be official "instructions". Or at least make them a varying set, with a way of submitting new patterns.
-- jutta, Apr 30 2005


a british newcomer to tokyo when i was living there, told me how on her first visit to a japanese restaurant, was forced to call the waiter over, because it seemed her disposable wooden chopsticks were stuck together.

of course the disposable wooden ones are all joined together, and i can imagine the look on the waiter's face.
-- benfrost, May 01 2005



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