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Japan creates gaming chopstick holder, because gaming doesn’t always stop when it’s time to eat

Casey Baseel Aug 30, 2021
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Or is that eating doesn’t always stop when it’s time to game?

Video games and snack foods are as much a winning combination as jumping heavy kick into crouching medium kick into hadoken. There is, however, a problem that comes up when trying to simultaneously satisfy your cravings for tasty treats and electronic entertainment: grease and grime transferring from your fingers to your controller.

This is an especially unpleasant scenario in the modern era, where controllers can cost 60 bucks or more and might have a touch pad that you’d rather not get smeared with the remnants of your sweet and/or salty indulgences. Some might say the solution is to keep your gaming and snacking sessions separate, but ask yourself, do you really want to lead such a bleak life? Of course not, which is why Japanese company B’full developed the Gaming Chopsticks Holder.

The Gaming Chopsticks Holder allows you to simultaneously grip a game controller and eating utensils, while keeping any food from even indirect contact with the device. The angle is essentially reversed from standard chopstick use, in that you’re eating on the outside of your hand.

▼ Whether you’re a console, mobile, or PC gamer, the Gaming Chopsticks Holder has you covered.

Since holding a controller doesn’t allow you to bend your fingers like you would when using chopsticks the normal way, the Gaming Chopsticks Holder is configured so that you bring the tips of the chopsticks together by pressing your index and middle fingers together.

▼ The unloaded holder

Loading up the holder seems like a pretty intuitive process, but maybe because manuals and tutorials have been a part of gaming for so long, B’full has also provided a diagram of dos and don’ts.

▼ It basically boils down to “insert the chopsticks by pressing them down from above, not sliding them in tip-first,” and “make sure the two chopsticks’ tips line up.”

In addition to letting your hold your chopstick and controller at the same time, there’s another advantage offered by the Gaming Chopsticks Holder: should you decide you want to set your chopsticks down for a while, it’ll be the holder and chopsticks’ base, not their tips, that are touching whatever surface you set them on, keeping your table or desk clean from whatever food particles may be present.

▼ It’s something some gamers outside Japan might overlook, but chopsticks work just fine even with traditionally Western snack foods, like potato chips.

B’full designed the Gaming Chopsticks Holder to work with the break-away kind, but since you’re supposed to split the sticks before you insert them, it looks like there’s a chance it’ll work with standard chopsticks too. The company does caution that certain types of break-away chopsticks, such as round small-diameter ones, might not have the securest fit, though, so you’ll want to use sufficiently beefy ones.

▼ Average fit (triangle) vs. good fit (circle)

The Gaming Chopsticks Holder is priced at 1,210 yen (US$11) and can be purchased online directly from B’full or through Amazon. And if you need even more gamer-focused lifestyle gear, there’s always Japan’s gaming blanket and gaming bed.

Source: B’full via IT Media
Images: Amazon/B’full
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he sincerely apologizes to all his fellow SNK fans for not using “jumping heavy kick to crouching heavy punch to burn knuckle” for this article’s video game combo example.