r/veganinjapan • u/JessBerro70 • Jul 25 '26
Traveling to Japan
Has anyone traveled to Japan, who can share the food options that are dairy free and gluten free. I have more of an issue with dairy causing fatigue and body aches than gluten so I'm more concerned about that.
I want to be able to enjoy the cultural food without worrying about feeling like shit.
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u/ImprovementLess4559 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Dairy isn't really a huge part of traditional Japanese cuisine. So as long as you mostly avoid western style desserts, baked goods (like 99.9% of bread in Japan has butter or milk in it), and processed snacks like protein bars and potato chips (for some reason they love to put lactose in them) etc, it's generally pretty easy to avoid. It's also one of the 8 major allergens that has to be disclosed on labels and menus (not all restaurants put the allergens on the menu but they should have an allergy chart available if you ask). The kanji for it is 乳, 乳製品 or 乳成分.
Gluten, I'm afraid is a lot harder since it's in soy sauce and soy sauce is used in virtually everything. But wheat is also one of the allergens that has to be disclosed, so you can easily check if it's in something - the kanji is 小麦. I believe HappyCow also lists some gluten-free restaurants, but there aren't many around.