Japan Part 1: Restaurants and other vegan experiences

Greetings all! I have just spent a whirlwind week in the land of the rising sun.. and bonito flakes!
Explanation needed: I had an intersemester break after my exams, so I scraped together my savings and decided to go and visit friends from home who are doing their year abroad in Tokyo. Tokyo hardly seems to be the ideal place to be a vegan, or on a budget but I did it and had an amazing time! I must admit that it is a little bit more difficult to be vegan in Japan than it is here in Spain or at home in Ireland but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. Far from it! Especially with the help of Happy Cow and the Japan Vegan Guidebook (although check the websites for updates, there are many), as well as the documented exploits of other vegans.

At times frustrating but mostly rewarding, I found the experience of eating in Japan to be both a challenge and an adventure! The joy of travel is to experience a new culture and discover new tastes. Amongst the delicious new culiary delights I sampled were onigiri, konnyaku, natto, umeboshi, mochi with an entire strawberry inside and matcha oreos!

During my trip I went to three entirely vegan restaurants, The Loving Hut, the Brown Rice Café and the Vegan Healing Café. There are many other vegan, vegetarian and macrobiotic eateries scattered across the city but alas I didn't get the chance to visit all of them. Maybe next time! I also, with the assistance of my Japanese-speaking bf, managed to eat in a couple of pretty standard, cheap ramen places (and just eat in general!!). My favourite was a place called Tomato Ramen in Yotsuya, (which doesn't seem to have an internet presence unfortunately) which serves the traditional noodles but in a beautiful garlicly, spicy, tomato stock which someday I will try in vain to recreate!



Delicious, cheap soba in a 24h ramen shop

Loving Hut: This was by far my favourite vegan place in Tokyo, simply because not only was the food amazing, but it was also quite cheap (by Japanese standards) and full of animal rights literature. I ate there twice, once I had a sit-down meal with teryaki tofu and blueberry cheesecake, and the other I got the 500yen bento box (which in Japan is very cheap), which also had the delicious teryaki tofu. Delicioius Teryaki all roud then!

The Brown Rice Café : A bit more expensive than the Loving Hut, but it's worth it for good food. I had a root vegetable gratin with vegetable soup, which while it was a deviation from the Japanese style of cooking, ie very Western, was comforting and delicious. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to visit their shop, but they also make bentos and cakes to take away.

Vegan Healing Café: Despite my mantra that it's worth paying a little bit extra for good food, I felt that this little café was a little bit over-priced. My tempeh sausages were delicious, and came with a wonderfully intriguing white sauce and a metric tonne of brown rice and some side salad. Hearty, filling, but not gourmet. I unfortunately didn't care for their carrot cake * , but I had never tried carrot cake before so I'm unsure as to whether this was because I don't like it in general or that their's wasn't great. I think my meal cost 1150yen all together, which I justified only by the fact that I was supporting a good, small vegan business. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, Japan in general is an expensive country and therefore perhaps their running costs are quite high.

During my trip I didn't just eat in restaurants, I'm not nearly that wealthy! I'm a student travelling on a budget, remember! I ate out of combinis and the odd supermarket too, the story of which will be part two of my Japanese blogging tome!

* I have since tried other carrot cake which was delicious so I'm afraid it was just theirs. I'm going to be optimistic and say I caught them on a bad day.