In 1986, two years out of college and restless at her job with an ad agency, Riccardi left New York to spend a year in Kyoto, where she lived with a Japanese couple and attended an elite school devoted to the study of kaiseki, a highly ritualized form of cooking that accompanies the formal tea ceremony. From her adoptive "family" she learned about Japanese home cooking and Kyoto's food markets. At the kaiseki school, she was introduced to an art form in which everything is symbolic, from the food and utensils to the colors of the guests' kimonos. Immersion in Japanese cuisine taught her about the country's history, culture and art as well as its cooking, so that even a meal in an ordinary restaurant left her feeling that she had "visited a museum, heard a fascinating lecture, opened several gorgeously wrapped gifts, and consumed the essence of spring in Kyoto."
There's an excerpt on the Amazon link and also an account of her first experience at an upscale sushi bar on the Globalist website here. I haven't heard this view before "I had heard that Japanese men twitch with pleasure every time they snap the sticks open. New chopsticks are said to be like young virgins: The snap symbolizes their deflowering". That certainly puts the book's title in a different light.
