If you are vegetarian or vegan and living in Japan shopping can be tricky, especially  if you can’t read ingredients labels. I ate what I thought was vegetarian Miso (bean paste) ramen for many months before I found out that it also contained ポークエキス (pork extract). I hope the following list of words will make things a little easier for others.

Gelatin ゼラチン

Beef　ビーフ　　Beef Extract　ビーフエキス

Chicken 鶏  or チキン　Chicken Extract　チキンエキス

Pork ポーク　Pork Extract　ポークエキス

Katsuobushi (fish sprinkles)　鰹ぶし

Another useful thing to know is that when you are buying eggs in Japan the most expensive ones are not free range eggs but rather fertilized eggs. These are labelled 有精卵 yuu-sei-ran. There doesn’t appear to be any particular labelling for free range eggs, but they are usually priced between the battery eggs and the fertilized eggs. At my local supermarket the free range eggs have a photo on the box showing chickens wandering around in the dirt.