It's the way it is sounds like a completely bullshit explanation in Yuri's mind, and his initially skeptical expression says as much. When there's a little more elaboration...all right, so it's about the way the soup is served, then, from the street vendors like the ones at the spring festival. His skepticism gives way to a grudging sort of understanding.

'I'll see if other people are doing it before I do it. Until I get better at this, at least.' It's the safest choice he can make; he isn't putting this much effort into learning how to use chopsticks just to look like a stupid foreigner who doesn't know the right way to eat with them around other people. 'Though it's not like I'll be using them around other people, anyway, apart from Dedka.'

It's just for him and his grandfather. (And for now, with Katsudon, even if he tells himself that this doesn't really count.)

He starts sifting through his bowl again, trying to tease the noodles apart and find a likely candidate for his next mouthful. His narrow-eyed concentration gives him the look of a cat preparing to swipe a fish out of a pond, and when he goes in for the attempt it looks like he'll be successful...except that one of the noodles is rather longer than he'd expected, and seems to stretch out as it clings to its fellows in the bowl. Between scrabbling with the chopsticks and moving the bowl closer to his face, he almost has his nose among the carrots before he gets the errant noodle free and into his mouth.