How can vegetarians find food in Japan?

Travelling in Japan, you won’t have much difficulty in finding vegetarian/vegan restaurants in big cities like Tokyo or Osaka. In small cities or towns, however, it still is hard to find a decent restaurants for vegetarians. Most ordinary restaurant will serve some dishes that vegetarians and vegans can have, but it could be a problem for you to get the staff to understand what you don’t eat if you don’t speak Japanese.

If you want to be safe, supermarkets and convenience stores would be an option. If you are a vegetarian and have milk and egg, there won’t be much problem. The stores have lots of different types of bread. The problem for vegans is that Japanese bread typically contain milk and/or egg to be soft; most Japanese people don’t like dry and hard bread like we find in Europe (I heard the Japanese don’t secrete as much saliva as Westerners do though I’m not very sure if it’s true). Even French baguette might contain milk in Japan.

Typical foods that I buy in these stores as a vegan are rice balls/triangles (onigiri) stuffed with pickled ume or kelp. There are many more different kinds of rice balls/triangles but unfortunately most of them are seasoned with with chiken extract or stock from fish.

I also buy fresh salad but you need to be very careful when you choose a dressing because it may contain chien extract. You may also find pickled vegetables, which are normally vegan.

There aren’t many other options except for simple foods such as dry fruit and nuts.

Japan isn’t the best place for vegans and above are the only vegan options in most shops, so I would strongly recommend you look for nice and decent restaurants before you come. But if you don’t mind spending a few days without good meals, you will always have these limited options anywhere in Japan; there are about 57,000 convenience stores all over Japan.