Lowell05

My roommate is a vegetarian (I am not) and we are traveling to Japan together at the end of March.

Could you please give us some tips on finding vegetarian food in Japan? Do most budget restaurants have vegetarian options or will my roommate have to go to special vegetarian restaurants?

Thanks in advance for your help!

KimJapan

It depends how strictly vegetarian your roommate is. No meat or chicken only, no problem. No fish too, bigger problem. No eggs/no dairy too, bigger problem still.

Vegetarians are few and far between here, believe it or not. Upscale hotel restaurants or temple lodging with meals may be your safest bet. Indian restaurants have vegetarian offerings and there are many of these. Italian restaurants may also be a good bet...salads with no dressing/meat/cheese/fish can be ordered. Pasta, no sauce.

Everyday restaurants, like udon and ramen shops, soba shops, family restaurants and such, use dashi (fish broth basically) as the base for just about everything. Miso soup starts as dashi, as does the broth for noodles. "Vegetable" soup is more often than not made with beef or chicken broth. Curry outside of Indian restaurants is almost surely made with beef extract. Almost every salty snack food, from potato chips to "veggie" chips, contains beef extract. Salad dressings frequently too...actually, just about anything processed at all has to be suspect...even sweets and desserts, as they often contain gelatin (from beef).

Now that you are discouraged...chin up! It is possible to be vegetarian and not starve to death! If your roommate eats fish you'll be OK. If not, and you are on a budget, try family restaurants (Gusto, CoCo's California, Skylark are a few...there are many). They have salads without meat or fish.

Department store basements are filled with food items...try the bakeries (be careful of what is INSIDE the bread, though...check carefully and/or ask if it's plain). Sushi shops have cucumber, daikon and kampyo maki rolls. These are also available in convenience stores and supermarkets. There are some special tofu restaurants, where if you reserve ahead they can make a totally veggie meal...the usual tofu fare also contains meat and fish.

Department store top floors are the restaurant floors. Italian is affordable, and often there is plain tomato sauce. Big cities do have a few health/vegetarian restaurants.

It might be useful for you to know:
niku = meat
toriniku = chicken
tamago = egg
sakana = fish
gyunu = milk

____?_____ wa haitemasu ka? = Is there ___?____ in this?

____?____ wa taberaremasen. = I can't eat ___?___

If you ask REALLLLY nicely for special food, you might get it, but not in family restaurants or fastfood places, as everything there is retropacked and only heated. Many places will say no, they can't give vegetarian food....be prepared for that and don't take it personally. Have a great trip!

Lowell05

Thank you for the detailed reply. My roommate doesn't eat fish but is OK with the dishes that have fish, beef or chicken broth. I guess we'll just have to do extra planning to take this into account.

I have a quick question regarding food at the temples. Will it be possible for us to eat at the temples if we don't stay there? We'd love to check out the vegetarian food there but temple lodging is a bit expensive for us.

Once again, thank you so much for taking time to reply to all the questions. We really appreciate it.

KimJapan

Interesting...it's the first time I've actually heard of a vegetarian that will eat meat/fish as long as it doesn't look like meat or fish or they can't identify it as such

Anyway, If you don't stay at the temples (that even offer lodging at all) then they generally don't feed you. Mt. Koya area is famous for temple lodging and vegetarian food.

Since your roommate doesn't seem to mind fish and meat products as an ingredient in food, then you shouldn't have any trouble eating at all and can go anywhere. Just know that fish and/or meat will be an ingredient in the food.

Neil_Oz

KimJapan, it's a confusing situation. As the father of two vegetarian daughters (now working in China and so almost by definition ex-vegetarians) I thought I had it figured out until I read an article on the subject in "Time" magazine. There's a maze of sub-species under the general heading of "vegetarian", including "pesco-vegetarians". I'm not sure how a "vegetarian" can happily eat seafood unless they consider fish a sort of seagoing vegetable, but there you are.

An American survey found that a high proportion of people who described themselves as "vegetarian" had eaten red meat within the last week. Go figure. It's certainly possible to eat well on a vegetarian diet, but it involves hard work. Vegetarians who aren't prepared to work at it can end up seriously malnourished as a result of protein deficiency. A further problem is that many vegetarians add interest to their diet by way of foods containing very high levels of sugar, fat and salt. I respect vegetarians' choices, but as members of an inherently omniverous species they're up against it in countries which traditionally haven't been able to afford the lifestyle choices presented by our rather spoilt western societies.

KimJapan

Interesting -...I was always vegetarian - the kind that doesn't eat meat, chicken, fish, or eggs - until moving to Japan. We found it far too expensive and far to difficult to maintain our US veg diet in Japan, so we added fish, and don't call ourselves vegetarian anymore

KimJapan

Wow...I didn't realize that if I used a semi-colon and a ) I'd get that sarcastic face. There wasn't any sarcasm intended, just surprise at the fact a vegetarian really doesn't mind meat. So, sorry about that!

Neil_Oz

A bit of a trap, mate. For my part I hope other readers didn't mind my drifting off on a tangent - that was absolutely out of character!

BigFeat

That whole broth thing got to me too... . I've been a vegeterian for 14 years now and I actually am worried about my upcoming trip to Japan. When I think of Japanese restaurants I think of sushi or sushi type dishes. Since I don't include fish in my diet I kinda figured I'm pretty much screwed. However, I figured that because there is a small buddisht population it wouldn't be hard to find a place that would cater to my diet. But I'm guessing you won't find most buddisht dining at a local tourist restaurant anyway. The only Asian dishes I take an appetite to are mainly Thai and Korean because they have several vegi dishes. As far as you guys bringing up the meat extracts in seemling vegeterian dishes that is something I really need to watch out for. I plan on buying my groceries and cooking, but how the heck am I going to be able to read the ingredients if they're written in Kanji? My G-friend isn't a vegetarian, but again I think I'm screwed. Oh boy!!

Florence

Bonjour Lowell, Bigfeat, and all vegetarians,

Don't panic, you should not starve:

here are links to lists of vegetarian restaurants in Japan: http://www.happycow.net/asia/japan/
http://www.vegdining.com/GetRestList.cfm?rgk=AS-JAP

More info here: http://www.vegietokyo.com/
and at the vegetarian society of Japan http://www.jpvs.org/ep

For sushi, you're safe with "Inari zushi" (sushi rice in a fried tofu pouch cooked in sweet soy sauce).

For snacks, onigiri (rice balls) filled with umeboshi (salty plums, beware it can be quite sour).

BigFeat

Thanks for the links..

Lowell05

Thanks so much for the links.