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The story
An AERA article asking whether so-called “shii-haa” — using a toothpick after meals to pick food out from between your teeth, complete with the sucking sound — counts as a manner violation drew a flood of responses on 5ch’s Newsflash+ board.
The thread was a mix of reactions: some questioned the article’s basic premise, saying they’d “never actually seen it happen in real life”; others pointed out that gums recede with age, creating gaps between teeth; and still others recommended switching to floss or an oral irrigator.
Is Sucking on a Toothpick After Meals a Manner Violation? The “Disgust” Flooding Social Media That the “Older Guy Generation” Doesn’t Know About | AERA DIGITAL
Using a toothpick after a meal to remove leftover food stuck in your mouth — it’s something many people, men especially, have probably done at least once. When describing the sound in writing, people use terms like “shii-haa,” “shii-shii,” “chi-chi-chi…”
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Source: dot.asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
Re: #10
Just do it discreetly. Opening your mouth wide and making loud noises in public is "tsuma-hara" (toothpick harassment).
Just go rinse your mouth in the bathroom. Take your tooth-crud-covered toothpick trash with you.
Re: #22
You see it all the time at Sukiya's breakfast set. Makes me want to kill someone.
Gums recede or shrink, exposing more of the tooth root, which creates more gaps. It varies by person, but it's an unavoidable part of aging.
He just holds it in his mouth, he's not really doing the shii-haa thing — though his eating manners are gross.
You don't have to do it in front of people though.
No they haven't. It's a minority who do this. What's with just deciding that based on guesswork? Whatever magazine this is, this kind of piece has always been full of weirdos.
They just want to bash old guys, so they're listing off anything, even stuff nobody does anymore these days.
"Men especially…"
They covered themselves properly there. Mission accomplished on the impression manipulation.
Try a portable oral irrigator. It beats floss by a long shot.
Is this whole story just something the reporter made up?
Yeah, restaurants that put out toothpicks are rare these days. And if they're not there in the first place, there's no problem to begin with.
There are people who go on about convenience-store toothpicks too — I doubt they even have much of a social life.
I used to bring a toothbrush to work and brush after lunch too, but I still ended up with gum disease. I still don't know what the right answer is for brushing when you're young and an interdental brush or floss won't even fit through.
Now I go to the dentist regularly and use an interdental brush, so the gum disease has at least stopped progressing.
At first it bleeds a ton, but it stops quickly, and once your gums get healthier it stops bleeding altogether.
Re: #185
The framing that "everyone does the shii-haa thing once they hit that age" is a bit off. Even if you use a toothpick, you can do it without making noise. Plenty of elderly people cover their mouth with a hand and use one silently.
Background and Key Points
Post-meal toothpick use is a genuine Japanese custom with a specific name — “shii-haa” (also rendered shii-shii or chi-chi-chi) for the sucking sound made while working a toothpick between the teeth. It has traditionally been coded as an older man’s habit, often depicted in period dramas (the thread cites Atsuo Nakamura’s toothpick-chewing samurai character Kogarashi Monjiro) as a mark of a certain rough-edged masculinity. Toothpicks themselves have long been a fixture at Japanese restaurant tables, though several posters note that fewer restaurants stock them today, which several posters used to question whether the article’s premise was even still relevant. AERA, a mainstream weekly news magazine aimed at a general adult readership, frames the habit as a “manner violation” going viral on social media as something the “older guy generation” doesn’t realize is now seen as disgusting.
The thread’s real fault line wasn’t over etiquette but over whether the behavior described even exists anymore: multiple posters said they’d never witnessed anyone actually do the audible shii-haa in public, suggesting AERA manufactured or exaggerated a trend, while others insisted it’s alive and well, citing places like Sukiya’s breakfast counter. A second, quieter disagreement was generational fatalism versus rejection: some argued receding gums make toothpick use inevitable with age, while a dissenting voice countered that using a toothpick doesn’t require the noise or the open mouth — plenty of elderly people do it silently and discreetly.
What the thread never engages with is the dental mechanism itself in any depth: gum recession from periodontal disease is a real, common age-related condition that widens interdental gaps, which is why posters reflexively reach for toothpicks rather than the interdental brushes or oral irrigators dentists actually recommend for that specific gap size.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Newsflash+) thread “Is Sucking on a Toothpick After Meals a Manner Violation? The “Disgust” Flooding Social Media That the “Older Guy Generation” Doesn’t Know About | AERA.”
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