Living in Japan can be a little tricky if you are vegetarian or vegan, but it is far from impossible.
In general you don’t get products that are specifically targeted at vegetarians. So no veggie burgers at fast food chains, no veggie symbols on packages of food, no spicy bean burgers or anything by Linda McCartney.
There are veggie / vegan restaurants but they tend to be quite rare and, until recently, it was difficult to find out where they were. For the opening evening at Cotonoha I asked a local vegan restaurant, Salon Cuttho, to provide half the food. They made samosas, spring rolls, bruschetta, croquettes and ratatouille. The guests thought the food was delicious, and it disappeared fast (too fast in fact – didn’t realize that an international crowd require far more food than an all Japanese crowd of the same number).
The next day, while settling the bill at Salon Cuttho, I saw they were selling a Japan Vegan Restaurant Pocket Guide. Written by Herwin Walravens it gives information on over 100 vegan/veggie restaurants in Japan.
Japan Vegan Restaurant Pocketguide
You can find out more about the book at Herwin’s homepage www.veganjapan.net He lists 8 vegetarian cafe/restaurants in Okinawa including Salon Cuttho so I have lots of places to check out. Also when I go traveling around Japan I’ll know exactly where I can find veggie food rather than relying on inarizushi and shiso onigiri from convenience stores.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 
If I may ask (I have a friend who’s vegetarian and allergic to half of existence and hesitates to visit as a result) how do you deal with dashi? Usually you have no clue if dashi is based on katsuobushi or niboshi, or if it’s vegetarian. And often you don’t know if a food uses dashi or not.
If you are cooking at home you can use vegetable stock cubes. You can also use konbu stock.
Eating out is much more tricky. I don’t eat soba or ramen in restaurants as they will contain pork stock. Miso soup will normally contain fish stock. It may be possible for a cook to make soba / ramen / miso etc with a mushroom / vegetable stock. Explaining this is tricky although the Herwin’s book has soem useful phrases.
Normally when eating out I have non-Japanese food, Italian, Indian, Israeli, Mexican. At home I can make ramen, yakisoba, tempura and be sure they are veggie.
Crisps (potato chips) in Japan often contain chicken or beef extract. (Starbucks sea salt chips are okay but the black pepper ones have chicken extract)
Hope this helps your friend!
Chris
Thanks, and yes, it helps. Unfortunately it pretty much confirms what we already suspected: coming here is not a good idea for her. We’d have to almost completely forgo eating out if she did.
I’m pretty sure soba and udon is sometimes served with konbu and/or shiitake-based dashi. The problem is of course that you never really know.
A friend of mine, Seb, who is a strict vegan came out to Japan recently and had a great time.
Your friend can contact at his website as I am sure he can answer questions on eating out far better than I can.
http://www.whixey.com/avegancalledbacon/