1. Miso soup. I didn’t know about this one until a server at one of my favorite Japanese restaurants in Minneapolis mentioned it to me. (She must have been vegetarian herself, because it’s such a small amount that I can’t imagine anyone else bothering to point it out.) Now let me be clear: miso paste — when it’s really just the paste — is only soy fermented using salt and a fungus called koujikin. The problem is that miso soup is made by mixing the paste with dashi soup stock, which has fish in it. Not a lot, almost never enough to make it taste fishy, but it’s there. Fish-free dashi does exist, but it’s rare; you generally have to buy it or make it yourself. If you have miso in a restaurant, it will have fish in it.
WolfC-Stock
2. Tofu. Kind of. No, I don’t mean that the Japanese secretly add meat to their spongy cubes of bean curd. But when you order many kinds of tofu, either by themselves or as part of a full dish, they come with fish flakes sprinkled on top. (Added bonus: the flakes are so thin that the heat rising off the other food makes them wriggle around like they’re possessed.) If you’re just looking at a piece of tofu with bonito flakes on top, it’s certainly possible (though annoying) to scrape them off — and skim off the surface they were sitting on, if necessary. But if you ordered soup, well, there’s a good chance some of it has already made it to the bottom of your bowl. Sorry.
ebbingtyde
3. Things the waitstaff assure you have no meat in them. In Japan, not only is fish not considered meat, but often ham isn’t either. Sometimes anything that isn’t beef is considered “meat-free.” Also, dashi (see #1) isn’t considered a fish item even though there’s fish in it. Vegetarianism just isn’t common over there, and a lot of people honestly don’t understand what it entails. So, unfortunately, you can’t always count on your server to tell you accurately if you can or can’t eat something. (This rule, of course, also applies to translated menus — they might be translated incorrectly, and they probably won’t list all of the ingredients in a dish. It’s helpful to know the characters for chicken, beef, etc. so you can spot them in names and descriptions.)
Moon-WillowStock
One of the only labels you can actually trust is shōjin ryōri, which is food that follows the Zen Buddhist tradition of ceremonial dining in which meat and fish are strictly forbidden. Unfortunately, onions and garlic are also banned in this type of cooking, on account of being too pungent, though I see that as a small price to pay for the assurance that I can eat everything on my plate. There’s another catch, too — some restaurants have a dish or two of this vegetarian’s delight that you can order à la carte, but true shōjin ryōri is a bit of a production. According to the TimeOut Tokyo guidebook: “the food is served in a procession of around a dozen small dishes, each an elegantly presented bite-size course. Expect the whole meal to take a couple of hours.” Leaving food on your plate is a serious offense, and you’re often required to book in advance. With all this fuss, you can end up paying more than you would for a meal with meat in it! It’s all in where you look. If — hopefully when — I find any restaurants with affordable, hassle-free shōjin ryōri, you can be sure I’ll write all about it.
In the meantime, 気をつけて — watch what you’re eating!
