世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Ranking recently published a survey looking at which bad table manners in other people just cannot stand.

Demographics

The survey was conducted from the 24th to the 27th of December 2013, and 1,076 people completed a private web-based questionnaire. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Here’s a random foreigner doing a number 10 and perhaps 20 too, as the middle finger looks a bit out of alignment.

Pretty much all of them annoy me to a certain exten; on the other hand, I can also be guilty of 3, 4, both 12s, and 17, although since 17 is a no-no in the west, it’s a difficult habit to break.

Ranking result

Q: What bad table manners in others can you just not stand? (Sample size=1,076)

Rank		Score
1	Noisy chewing	100
2	Quick to say “disgusting!”	56.5
3	Burping while eating	54.4
4	Fiddling with their mobile phone, smartphone all through the meal	53.9
5	Starting smoking after finishing their own meal, despite others still eating	50.5
6	Speaking with their mouth full	46.6
7	Spilling too much food on the table, floor	44.0
8	Taking far too much food at a buffet and leaving stuff behind	40.6
9	Drumming bowls with chopsticks	37.1
10	Eating with elbows on the table	34.5
11	Leaving behind grains of rice	34.1
12=	Licking the ends of the chopsticks	31.9
12=	Silently dumping disliked food on other people’s plates	31.9
14	Using chopsticks to pull dishes towards themselves	31.6
15	Leaving a little bit behind from every dish	30.3
16	Slurping soup, pasta	28.7
17	Eating food without holding the bowl	28.5
18	Not saying words of thanks before and after eating	27.9
19	Covering food with lots of condiments before even tasting it	27.8
20	Holding chopsticks, knives, forks funny	27.5
21	Mixing everything together	26.5
22	Stabbing food with chopsticks	23.3
23	Eating with the bowl too close to their face	22.1
24	Wiping their face, neck with a wet towel	18.0
25	Hovering chopsticks over all the dishes	17.8