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Is it "rude" to eat while walking? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I watched this recent video by Dogen about how immigrants should adapt to Japanese life etc.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_tXp5sFlHQ

One of the things I found odd was that he mentioned "eating while walking" as one of the offensive behaviors foreigners should stop doing. Many of the other examples made sense to me, but for this one - I never thought this was "rude", rather "odd". Thinking about it, I had a few conversations about this over time, but never got negative vibes for it (at least directly). Might be that people don't want to tell me it's rude, but I also got no negative opinions about it from people who lived abroad for a while (and thus are maybe better at communicating with foreigners) and/or are usually more upfront with me.

So my current understanding: It's odd but not rude. Thankful for any further insights.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

It's generally considered rude partly because of the possibly of food falling onto the ground, and also because it would incentivise the person to just drop the garbage after they're done eating whatever as is often the case in America and Canada.

When food carts are set up they generally have garbage collection nearby of some sort. That said staying in one place and eating is approved of more. If you're a foreigner you will get looks but a free pass in the sense of "ah we can't expect a foreigner to ever understand our culture and expectations" which is a pitying position from what I've experienced here.