Welcome to Japan Vegan
Friday, July 19, 2013
This blog is to be a short "sister-blog" to my main blog about vegan life in Taiwan. I have lived in Yokohama for two years, and will probably be here for one more year. The purpose of this blog is to provide some basic starting information for vegans travelling to or living in Japan.
The purpose of this blog is to provide useful information to vegan travelers or residents, and as such, I will aim to make the information as practical as possible. However, due to the size of Japan - and even Tokyo - this blog will never be complete, especially considering how quickly restaurants come - and unfortunately go - in Japan. However, since my 'Japan' posts on my Taiwan blog are becoming longer and longer, and since there is little (up-to-date) information out there on vegan options in Japan, it seems worth putting together this short blog while I am here. If you find something out of date, please let me know.
While I will provide photos and reviews of restaurants I visit (if I think they're good), I still think the best way to find out up-to-date information is the Happycow website, and the Android App for finding nearby restaurants is a real life-saver. Vegout Tokyo also has some good information, however it's very much 'vegetarian' so I think there's a need for a specifically vegan blog on life in and around Tokyo.
The first (and possibly only) posts on this blog will be plucked straight from my Taiwan blog, as they are somewhat misplaced there, and not very usable as they are.
While Tokyo has some of the best vegan restaurants in East Asia (and perhaps the best variety after Bangkok) just getting by as a vegan is much harder in Japan than it is in Taiwan, since there are far fewer veg'n restaurants (none in my city of four million people), because fish products are the defining feature of Japanese cuisine, and because there is much less understanding - and acceptance - of vegetarianism here than in Taiwan. It's not uncommon for people to burst out laughing (in disbelief) when I explain that I'm vegan, as opposed to the almost universal respect from Taiwanese. From my experience, even non-veg foreigners are much more understanding of vegetarianism in Taiwan than in Japan.
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| I never cease to be amazed at how calm and peaceful even busy and densely-populated areas of downtown Tokyo can be, especially during the evening. This is especially true of the city's parks. |