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Some
restaurants provide an o-shibori,
or damp hand towel, to wipe your hands before eating. Although you
will see some men wipe their faces with them, women should only wipe
their hands. When you're finished simply fold the towel and put it
back on its tray.
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Don't eat
directly from a communal dish. Whatever you take must be set down on
your own plate before you put it in your mouth. (If you already read
the chopstick page, you know that you should be using the other ends
of your chopsticks to take things from a shared plate and you need to
reverse your chopsticks before you can eat from them anyway.)
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Alternate
between dishes. Have a bite of fish, then a bite of vegetable, then a
bite of rice rather than just starting with one dish, finishing it,
and then moving on to the next.
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At a good
Japanese restaurant, a great deal of care goes into what you will be
served and how it will be presented. This is not the time to ask for
a number of special requests or substitutions.

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For those of
you lucky enough to be eating at a restaurant in Japan, remember that
it is considered extremely rude to blow your nose at the table.
Excuse yourself and take care of this in the rest room. Blowing your
nose is considered a private hygiene matter and would be something
akin to someone cleaning his ears at the table here in America.
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