Improbable Chopsticks Skill

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"Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything."
—Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, just before Daniel catches the fly on his first try

One way to show skill is with chopsticks. A common ability of the Old Master.

Examples of Improbable Chopsticks Skill include:

Anime and Manga

  • Inverted For Laughs in Keroro Gunsou: Garuru's only weakness is that he can't eat with chopsticks unless he resorts to spearing his food.
  • In GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class, the girls are sketching a tissue box, when a fly is going to the tissue and is feared to change the shape of it so the girls have to start over. Noda then find a set of chopsticks and suggest that Tomokane use them against the fly. She actually manage to caught it.
    • Later when they are eating they have a game where they have to do different things. Tomokane gets "don't use chopsticks". But since the Japanese word for chopsticks, "hashi", is also how you read the kanji for "the ends", she figure out that she can just use the middle parts of the chopsticks in stead of the ends. It however turn out to be to hard for her to eat rice that way. Kisaragi get her a spoon.

Film

  • The Karate Kid provides the page quote.
    • Subverted and Played for Laughs in the Jackie Chan remake of The Karate Kid. He swats a fly with a swatter, then picks it up with chopsticks, to which Dre remarks, "That's nasty."
  • Part of Po's training (and the first part to go well) in Kung Fu Panda involves fighting over the last dumpling with chopsticks.
  • Toned down in Kill Bill: one of Pai Mei's tests for his students is for them to be able to graciously eat rice with chopsticks after a full day of Training from Hell (I.E. trying to break a board only a finger length away by BASHING YOUR KNUCKLES AGAINST IT.). The Bride eventually passes, Elle doesn't.

Live-Action TV

  • One documentary about unusual weapons had a section about shuriken and related weapons. One of the people shown was an Asian martial artist who could throw normal chopstick with enough force to make it stuck in a piece of wood like a dart.

Newspaper Comics

  • The Garfield strip from January 5, 1988:

Jon: Still haven't mastered those chopsticks, huh, Garfield?
Garfield: Mastered? No ... *Holds up the entire contents of the takeout box between his chopsticks* Perfected? Yes ...

Video Games

  • Lo Wang from Shadow Warrior is fond of doing this if you leave him idle for too long.