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Yea I was like WTF. I went to Japan for work for several months and when the guys at Yokohama office took me eating sushi that's what they did.

"No sushi for you!"

It's quite possible they simply make their sushi smaller, depending where you live. Americans tend to make things a size or two bigger than a lot of the rest of the world.

I assume it's fine as long as you don't get any on the rice

The only one I really would avoid is passing things between or touching chopsticks together. This is reminiscent of Japanese funeral rituals and thus considered rude to do at the table.

The others are more about common sense and trying to help you enjoy the sushi as the chef intended:

• They are bite-sized pieces, designed as a flavour combination, so don't break them up in any way
• If you don't want rice, sashimi is a good way to get that
• Putting too much soy sauce on the rice can make it fall apart
• (real) Wasabi is delicate and mixing it with soy sauce will certainly destroy its subtle flavour. In any case in a high-end place the sushi chef will have added everything that's intended as part of the flavour combination before serving the sushi, so adding stuff is not necessary

But again, these are suggestions. Enjoy the sushi how you like, you're not hurting anyone.

Now in fairness we dont know how high end this Sushi place is, if its a place where your paying for the experience its more understandable but It does read a little bit passive agressive.

Yep. To turn the tables, is anyone going to stop you if you order a well-done steak and douse it in ketchup? Probably not unless you’re at a very high end establishment, but will it come off as uncultured, rude to the chef and raise a few eyebrows? You bet.

Likewise, there are Italian places where they will outright refuse to cut your pizza for you or to put parmesan on seafood pasta. British high tea is loaded with rules for serving and consumption order. Lots of cultures have these rules and expectations.

This is a helpful guide to general politeness and etiquette in a culture that highly prizes those things. It’s meant to be helpful to those who care. Why people are shitting on it as some show of defiance is beyond me and comes off childish as all hell.

Lemmites love being difficult thran bastards.

I switch my knife and fork as I need to use them, knife in right hand when I need to cut and fork in right hand to eat, that's all I know how to do 🤷

The context of this sign being in a sushi restaurant would be the key here. In higher-end, "omakase" sushi restaurants, you'll be served a set of sushi piece by piece as the chef makes it in front of you. Typically you'll want to eat it as soon as it is placed on your plate.

None of this is mandatory, the sign says so. They're social norms, not legal rules. It's just saying "this is how this food is consumed in its original country, and breaking these norms may result in inadvertently offending someone or embarrassing yourself", which might be something you'd like to know if you plan to travel to that country, or simply to try experiencing it in the traditional way - after all, most social norms have a hidden logical reason. Many of these exist simply to avoid making a mess.

You're free to eat however you want, however some cultures do place a lot of significance on food and how it is consumed. People in Italy will lose some respect for you if you try to order a Hawaii pizza, put ketchup on pasta, or use a knife improperly. The same goes for Japan and many other places. You'll still be served and probably treated with superficial kindness, it just depends on how much weight you put on your experience vs that of others.

I think the tiny tiny rice is just sushi with very little rice. You can just see a smaller ball of rice under the fish bit.

That's not usually the case in a high-end sushi place. The chef will prepare your orders one by one and serve them out as soon as each is completed, so you will get one piece at a time.

All within 30 seconds after waiting 20 minutes to get a tray of 4.

It's actually culturally appropriate to eat sushi with your hands if you want, making the turn over dipping easier. The only reason they say not to dip the rice side is the worry that it'll soak up too much soy sauce and the fish flavor will be overpowered. But it's not that big a deal.

The passing food from one set of chopsticks to another is pretty strictly avoided in Japan though. They pass bones like that as part of funerary rites so it's pretty closely wired into Japanese people as a cultural taboo.

But yes, you're supposed to flip the nigiri 90+ degrees when dunking. It's why I usually just stick to the sashimi. 9/10 chance I drop the chunk in the sauce. Can't go wrong with that.

Real wasabi is way more expensive than $3.

Why is mixing a thing suddenly?

Definitely not new, people have been doing this since at least the 90s, when I was a kid.

I also know plenty of Japanese people who say dipping the rice lightly into soy sauce is the correct method, so take literally any "sushi etiquette" guide with a grain of salt.

Eat your food in whatever way brings you joy. Anyone that says otherwise is a pointlessly-gatekeeping idiot.

I mix my wasabi and soy sauce every time. I also dip my sushi in this mixture rice-side down. I’ve never had anyone complain about this. If any sushi chef ever does complain I will just leave and never give business to that gas station again.

People in Japan do it all the time. Ideally, the chef would get the proper amount of wasabi on everything and you wouldn't need/want to do it, but that is not always the case. It is generally looked on more favorably to dab some wasabi on each piece rather than mixing, though.

It depends. In really high-end and authentic sushi restaurant, there is already wasabi between the fish and the rice. You are supposed to dip the fish side in the soy sauce only.

On the other hand, it's okay to mix the wasabi if the sushi is not prepared that way. People do this even in Japan.