Last year in advance of my residency, I attended washi paper-making and kintsugi workshops in Tokyo before heading down to Yakushima, an island known for its natural wonders. There are always more things one could do than time to do them in, so I prioritized immersion in nature to gather reference imagery and experiences, but one of the opportunities I was sad to miss out on in Yakushima was the chance to make my own set of wooden chopsticks.
Since I was lucky enough to get to come back to Japan this summer, I looked into whether there were any chopstick workshops in or around Tokyo. The most frequent recommendation was to visit a town called Kawagoe, which by a combination of train, bus, and walking was about an hour and a half away from where I was staying. There, Wood Works Kawagoe (Karaki Woodworking) offers a workshop in making chopsticks.
When you arrive at the shop, you either can begin right away if there are available seats or you get a digital ticket reservation. When I showed up, all the seats were full but I was the first in line. One of the workers told me it would likely be around 45min wait, so I walked around the touristic “old town” streets of Kawagoe for a little bit, but 15 minutes later my seat was already open!
You first choose from a suite of wood blanks, selecting for either appearance, hardness, or both. I was instantly most attracted to the high contrast bocote of the selection options, which also happened to be one of the harder woods (and one of the most expensive). The shop presented the hardness of the wood as a potential upside and downside simultaneously, in that hardwood is good long-term for durability but is more difficult to shape, as it requires more strength to plane and sand. Bocote is a decorative wood not native to Japan (imported from Central America), but there are a lot of traditional woods for chopsticks that are imported including ebony, rosewood, and purpleheart.
I particularly liked one of the bocote wood blanks that had eyes in it, so I asked if they had any more pieces than what were on display so I could find a matching pair, and the staff kindly opened a deep drawer full of more blanks. I found two pieces that had a lot of contrast and some eyes.
A photo of me shaving down the first of my wood blanks.
Then I began the process of making my chopsticks. The blanks are printed with numbers on them, and you place one into a former in a specific sequence and shave down the wood with a plane until it becomes flush with the mold. You then rotate and put into the correct space in the sequence and do it again and again until you’ve done all four sides. Then you repeat the process with the second chopstick. I have to say that the hardness of the bocote was no problem at all at any stage, so I wouldn’t let the shop’s talk of needing sufficient strength impact your wood selection choice.
Sanding the chopsticks with coarse sandpaper.
Once you have finished planing, you refine the shape with a coarse sandpaper. Once you are happy with the shape of your chopsticks, you then polish them with a fine sandpaper. On this step, I polished until I thought they were likely good, and then asked a staff member to check. They said they could use more polishing, so I went back at it. I then asked again and received the same answer (which I was happy about - I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be aiming for or what was possible to achieve with the provided sandpaper, so I appreciated the feedback!). After polishing a third time, I got the OK to move onto the final step: oiling. I dipped each chopstick into linseed oil and rubbed it into the wood. This helps seal the surface while also highlighting the woodgrain.
When completed, you package the chopsticks and you’re done! I liked mine so much I thought maybe I should buy some sets of bocote chopsticks as souvenirs for others (the workshop also sells their own finished chopsticks), but when I went to look at their three bocote sets available for purchase, they were not nearly as beautiful as mine (and they were more expensive than mine as well, to cover the labor!). I ended up leaving with just my set. The workshop in total, including the type of wood blanks I selected, cost me about $35.
My finished, handmade set of bocote chopsticks!