I am heading to Tokyo mid June for 10 days and I am a non meat, non fish (I know!) eating person..I do, do dairy...any recomendations?

It was very hard for us. I just had two weeks in Japan (Tokyo, Tokyo Bay area/DisneySea, Kyoto, Shikoku) and my daughter who was w/me eats no meat or fish. However, for this trip she agreed to eat the broth made out of fish stock so she could eat udon noodle soup.

Breakfast was easy- we ate fruit and eggs (you can get hard bolied ones although they are a little soft on the yolk, at convenience stores), etc. I always made sure we had a good breakfast which helped a lot. We ended up eating dinner in a LOT of Italian restaurants so she could eat a cheese pizza or pasta, but it was even hard to get pasta without meat or seafood on it and the restaurants were not accomodating to our requests to leave out the meat/seafood. Whenever I saw salad on a menu, we ordered it for her. She ate mostly egg salad sandwiches (from convenience stores) for lunch or udon, but of course the udon is out for you due to fish broth, unless you decide to go for that.

Yogurt is sometimes avaialable in convenience stores, but not always.

ONe thing I did was to get a plastic jar of peanut butter and a small plastic jar of jelly from the grocery store there. That went w/us to every hotel rm. and we bought bread whereever we were so that if she could not find anything to eat, we always had a PBJ sandwich for her w/us.

We tried Buddhist vegetarian cuisine in Kyoto and could not stand it (yuba and fu). We had one VERY good leam in Kyoto of boiled tofu (yudofu) w/vegetable tempura, in Gion. We tried a few helath food type restaurants in Tokyo (Good Honest Grub, etc.) and they were not so good and were realtively expensive I thought.

It was very hard for her being a vegetarian in Japan, and that was someone who ate udon...

There are a lot of discussions of this on www.japan-guide.com's forums. Put "vegetarian" in the search box there. I got the most help from there on this subject.

oops, that was a meal we had in Kyoto, not a leam!

Italian, Indian, Macrobiotic, Vietnamese...international restaurants will be better for you than Japanese in most cases.
Oniku to sakana o taberarnai desu
will be a useful phrase for you. Noodle shops will prepare for you cold noodles on a plate without sauce if you like...bland.

Beware of prepared foods, even boiled looking stuff, as it is boiled in a fish based broth. Even "tofu hamburgers" have pork, beef, chicken or all three in them much of the time. Snack foods like chips often contain meat extract and/or lard.

Tofu/yuba restaurants are nice, but not cheap. They also use meat and fish in some dishes, so you have to specify carefully that you cannot eat it.

Luckily it's June and there are more fruits and veggies than during the spring.

Basement floors of department stores have food. There is always a fresh juice bar, which I'm sure you'll enjoy. You can also buy ready made salads and fruit bowls. The bakery sells French Bread and many others...be careful with the single serving versions as the fillings are often some sort of meat or meat containing items. Ask if in doubt. Then you can buy cheese and have a picnic if you like.

Hotel restaurants in the nicer places are very accommodating and will prepare just about anything we've found, but are not inexpensive.

It's difficult to seek out a specific place as the so big, so just going into a place that looks good to you and asking will be maybe easier.

Omraisu (rice in an omelet) is made to order and can be made vegetarian if you eat eggs...order it as I said above. It's basically rice with ketchup and seasoning wrapped in a soft omelet. Not bad, cheap and filling.

Yakiniku restaurants (grilled meat!) have a huge selection of non-meat/non-fish items on their menu. I always order vegetables and they come raw and you grill them at your table. Yakionigiri (rice balls) are great grilled too. Korean vegetables, namuru, are meat/fish free and go nicely with rice. I never eat meat and love yakiniku places.

You'll be fine I think if you don't restrict yourself to finding specific restaurants, as that will take a lot of time and planning around meals and take away from your sightseeing. There is plenty to eat if you don't eat meat or fish.

Let me try that phrase again for you.
Oniku to sakana o taberarenai desu. = I cannot eat meat or fish.

One other thing that was a good for dinner for my daughter was okonomiyaki.

We did not have much luck at the hotel restaurants and room service for lunch and dinner items, including the Westin Tokyo, the Mira Costa at Disney (tried for dinner), the Okura in Kyoto, the ANA in Takamatsu, and the Hilton Narita. They did not have anything without meat, even at the Chinese restaurant at Mira Costa, and were just not willing to make us something off the menu. I wish they had, it would have been great.

We did go to several department store basements and bought stuff to take back to the room. What we had trouble with were the nights when we wanted to eat out at a restaurant, and just couldn't find those items Kim is talking about at the places we were. So we ended up w/Italian.

Okonomiyaki has fish in it in both the batter and in the fish flakes on top. The sauce contains meat extract usually.

I ordered it first and watched them make it. The one in Hiroshima had cabbage cooked on the griddle, seasoning (but no fish flakes, I saw the fish flakes and asked him not to add it), the batter for the "pancake" and an egg. No meat visibly added in- I spoke to him in Japanese phrases and showed him the Japanese phrases about no meat that my Japanese teacher had given me, and he was willing to make it without the added meat. And we were successful having the Kyoto okonomiyaki maker do the same thing.

But oops, I didn't realize that there was fish in the batter!!! Yikes.

Celine didn't eat the sauce, it is too strong for her.

Well, I guess I won't tell her now about the fish in the batter, what purpose would it serve now. But I'll tell her if we we go back again...

Darn, that is too bad. Okonomiyaki is so healthy and I thought we had scored an easy to come by inexpensive veggie meal. Thanks for the heads up, Kim.

Kim, what kinds of food do you get in a Vietnamese restaurant that have no meat? We have eaten Pho soup here in DC area, but Celine doesn't eat it as it has meat in the broth (at least the 4 places near us do). I know there is an egg pancake type dish w/bean sprouts and other veggies inside at our Viet. restaurants, but what else do you order at a Vietnamese restaurant in Japan? I'd like to know in case I take her back.

(She won't eat curry and Indian food, so that is out for us.)

The omelet type thing you mention with veggies in it. Here they serve a rice porridge dish as well that is fish/meat free if you request it. They will make raw spring rolls with tofu instead of pork or shrimp...so tofu, sprouts, lettuce, noodles. They will also make a fried version.

For Indian, Teaghan eats naan and rice and Navratan Curry...veggies, creamy, mild. She also like Saag with cheese. Celine might like them.

I'm a big fan of zaru soba (cold soba). You dip it in sobasuyu (soba sauce), you can season with wasabi...absolutley delicious. To my knowledge there's no animal by-products in it so it might fit the ticket for someone looking for a vegetarian meal in Japan.

The sauce for dipping is made with dashi, which is made from fish. Fine for someone who will eat fish, but not fine for someone who does not. Some high end places may provide shitake based tsuyu for vegetarians on request.

It seems like more and more of what we thought was ok for a vegetarian is not, because it actually has fish or meat in it. I had been cautioned about that before I went. After going through our trip and also this post-trip exchange on this posting, I still think it is very difficult for a vegetarian person traveling in Japan, esp. if you are the sort who is going to be upset in finding out later that something you ate and thought was ok, is actually not ok at all for your vegetarian diet.

That figures. And really zaru soba was one of the few things I could think of. Some of the vegetable tempuras are quite tastey (although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there's fish somewhere in the batter or oil...) Also there are a lot different Japanese pickles that are quite pleasant. Sweet potatos are quite popular and of course tea (plum tea is really good). But it's somewhat challenging to think of a lot of strictly vegetarian foods in Japan. Avoiding beef and chicken is easy, but if you're avoiding fish too, it can be difficult. Best of luck.

Being a lacto-ovo veggie myself, I usually manage with a few safe bets. In Japanese restaurants, the only thing I feel safe eating is white steamed rice, cold tofu, and ohitashi (both without bonito flakes). Liked veggie robatayaki, and Edamame (green soybeans) at Izakaya though. There used to be a chinese veggie restaurant called Bodaiju in Mita nr NEC headquarters, but not sure if there still is. Didn't feel comfortable with "ethnic"/Asian restaurants--porriges are made with chicken stock, and stir-fried veggies are cooked with lard. I also had lots of Italian pasta and Indian veggie sets (but not Japanese "curry" which has lard). One word of caution, you ask the waiter/waitress to hold the meat/fish, and they bring "green salad" that has bits of bacon or ham on it. When I asked, they say either "it's only for flavour" or "it's so small it doesn't count". So I guess I now ask if a dish comes with meat or chicken or fish or shellfish or bacon or ham.
Someone also said commercial breads can be made with margarine, which may contain animal fat. So I only had bagels and french baguettes.

This is not a very filling suggestion but convenience store onigiri (the kind filled with plum) would be vegetarian, no? I ate these for breakfast every single day when I was in Japan. I got very practiced at reading the words for "salted plum."

If you can choose the onigiri that do not have meat or fish, then yes, they are vegetarian. If you are vegetarian for health reasons, then beware of the onigiri and other convenience foods, as the MSG and preservative content is very high.

I was told that alot of pasta and noodles in Japan are made with egg. So if someone is a true vegan, I would think it would be very difficult to travel in Japan!