The Japanese attention to inane, pointless details sometimes infuriates me. The idea that there is only one way of doing things, and any other way, even if it has no effect what so ever on the outcome, is incorrect, pisses me off. The fact that the Japanese word for "different" (chigau) is the same word for "wrong" is a telling sign of their traditional intolerance of doing something other than in the percieved "correct way".

School lunches are served in the staff room. A trolley is wheeled in from the kitchen, and any teachers that happen to be present at the time team together to dish out the meals. If I'm there, I always lend a hand which involves laying out the trays, chopsticks, bowls and plates and serving out equal portions onto each tray.

However, it's not as easy as it sounds. There is one member of staff who objects heavily to the angle at which I lay the chopsticks on the tray. I have seen her in the past, go to the needless trouble of rearranging every pair of sticks that I have placed on the tray, simply to make a point.

Today, she went one step further. As I placed each pair of chopsticks on each tray, I could feel her eyes boring into my back, and I knew she was going to take action. Seeing the chopsticks at the side of the tray, rather than at bottom of the tray was just too crazy for her, and she jumped up, ran over, and announced: "Sam, NO, LIKE THIS!".

Now, I can understand why certain things are done the way they are. The highly ritualised Japanese Tea Ceremony, for example is performed using very precise and carefully controlled movements, appropriate for such a formal occasion and of course there is etiquette for most things, including where cutlery is placed but in this particular situation it DOES NOT MATTER. This is school lunch. Served on a tray. In the staff room. It's not silver service. The rice isn't even hot, for f**k's sake.

So feeling the scarlet mist rising, I questioned her as to why the chopsticks absolutely had to be laid along the bottom of the tray. Her demonstation soon cleared things up; she placed the sticks in the so called "correct position" and then, very slowly, making sure I was paying full attention, picked them up.

Oh, I see, why didn't you tell me before! A potential diner is able to pick up chopsticks, only if they are at placed along the bottom of a tray. Any other position generates an invisible force field, which makes it completely impossible for the hungry victim to pick them up.

In my mind I reversed the situation. If I were in England, and a foreign co-worker was helping to serve out lunch, and put the knife and fork, at, woe betide, a slightly different position to normal, would I go to the length of moving every pair back to what is considered "correct positioning"? Would I bollocks.

Do not despair though funkydrummer readers, for a terrible revenge has been plotted. I will adhere to her nit picking ways, day in, day out, letting her think she has converted me, then, on my last day of work, when it comes to lunch time, I will place the chopsticks, so that they are sticking vertically out of each bowl of rice, [a huge faux pas in Japan] and for the piece de resistance, I will attach a Union Jack Flag, to each stick.

Chop stick that in your pipe and smoke it.