So how good are you with chopsticks?

Re: Chopsticks vs. Fingers for sushi, I just asked my sis-in-law (my brother's wife, she's Japanese from Tokyo) about this and she said that these days most everyone uses chopsticks for sushi - but the few purists (or those who consider themselves as such) use their fingers. In any event, she said it is polite to use either fingers or chopsticks.

And that is interesting as it's the only instance I can think of where an established dining practice went from the more casual way to eat sushi, fingers, to the more complicated, chopsticks.
Of course this applies to 'modern' dining, not the medieval method of diving in with both hands and tossing the bones over your shoulder!

[Jenise]

Every once in a while, to show off, I switch the chopsticks to my left hand to eat a few bites. My lefthanded use is not very skilled, since I don't try this very often, but it is adeqaute for grabbing some large chunks of vegetable or meat.

Righthanded, I can do most anything except use the chopsticks like a wedge to pull apart large pieces of meat or fish.

Wow, you're good! I have two chopsticks here on my desk (the aforementioned tea stirrers) and I just attempted to pick up my camera download connection wire thingie with it. I had to send my right hand over to position them in my fingers, then when I tried to 'work' them the top stick scissor-kicked past the other I couldn't get it back.