Oshibori

An o-shibori (おしぼり or お絞り^?) or hot towel in English is a wet hand towel offered to customers in places such as restaurants or bars in China and Japan and in some Chinese and many Japanese restaurants worldwide. O-shibori are used to clean one's hands before eating, and have long been a common sight in China and Japan. Cold oshibori are used in summer, and hot oshibori in winter. In mājan parlors, the words atsushibo and tsumeshibo, from the Japanese words atsui (熱い^?), hot, and tsumetai (冷たい^?), cold, are sometimes used to refer to hot and cold o-shibori respectively.

The word o-shibori comes from the Japanese word shiboru (絞る^?), meaning "to wring", with the honorific prefix o-, which is added to several types of nouns, including many nouns related to washing or food; o-nigiri/o-musubi (お握り and お結び) "rice ball" follows the same pattern – see honorific prefix usage. In Japanese script, the word o-shibori is normally written in hiragana (おしぼり), seldom using kanji (お絞り or 御絞り).

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