Map of Vegetarian Restaurants in Japan
日本ベジタリアンレストランの地図

This is a searchable & clickable map of vegetarian restaurants in Japan based on this data from Japan Vegetarian Society. The map is divided into Eastern Japan (including Tokyo and Nagoya) and Western Japan (including Osaka and Kyoto).

日本ベジタリアン協会のデータに基づいているインタラクティブな地図です。地図は東日本と西日本に分けられています。

There are three types of restaurants on the map: 地図には次の3種類のレストランがあります。

A few tips on using it, and some links and info. （英語のみ）

View Vegetarian restaurants in Eastern Japan in a fullscreen map.
View Vegetarian restaurants in Western Japan in a fullscreen map.

Tips

In theory one should be able to search for vegetarian restaurants on Tabelog (Japanese), but I’ve had limited success. If you want to try anyway, the keyword to search for is ベジタリアンメニューあり (“has vegetarian menu”). Unfortunately, other vegetarian-related tags are almost never used on Tabelog. Another useful, but even more ambiguous, Tabelog keyword is 自然食 (“natural food”), which sometimes means macrobiotic and/or vegetarian.

You can also find extensive general tips for vegan eating and shopping in Japan at the Is It Vegan? Japan site.

Let your Airbnb host cook for you!

Airbnb has taken off in Japan and you can find plenty of hosts offering to cook you a dinner for 500 JPY to 1000 JPY per person, which is great value compared to a restaurant. Some are even explicitly offering vegetarian meals. Here are hosts we’ve had a great experience with. (Just make sure to check with the host to see if they still offer that option and if it fits their schedule.)

If you do not have an Airbnb account yet, you can get about 2,400 JPY worth of Airbnb credit by creating one through this invitation link.

Most of Airbnb guests in Japan are still foreigners, so in general Airbnb hosts can speak English well enough. Again, if you do not have an Airbnb account, do not miss the chance to get about 2,400 JPY worth of Airbnb credit by creating an account through this invitation link.

Useful vocabulary

My recommendation is to stick to vegetarian & macrobiotic when searching and asking for vegetarian (or vegan) food. Talking explicitly about meat, vegetables etc. (in Japanese, not to mention English) usually gets you nowhere: you’re almost bound to get at least a little bit of meat if you just ask for something made “only from vegetables”, or “without meat and fish”. The same goes for food labeled as “vegetable something”, pictures of vegetables, green leaves etc. – all this is meant just to conjure up an image of a healthy diet with a lot of vegetables.

Miscellanea

You can have a perfect vegetarian (or vegan) dinnner for two or a group of friends at Shabu-shabu Onyasai (しゃぶしゃぶ温野菜), a chain of shabu-shabu restaurants. Their vegetable all-you-can-yet course costs a little more than 2000 JPY per person and contains a really wide array of vegetables, mushrooms, tofu etc. (71 items). The course is called Kokusan Yasai Tabehoudai (国産野菜食べ放題, “Domestically Produced Vegetable All-You-Can-Yeat”). It’s just hard to find in the menu (on the bottom of a page), and you also need to order a “soup” without animal products if you want a completely vegetarian dish (when we visited, “konbu” and “lemon” did not contain any fish/meat stock). One table shares a pot, so if you want to come with meat-eating friends, make sure to reserve appropriately. They have an English menu. The web site is Japanse-only, but searching for a city name in Latin alphabet seems to work and you may also try Tabelog or Google maps to find a restaurant.

(Almost) vegetarian bentō (lunch box), called “Vege Deluxe Bento”, are sold at some of the largest JR train stations (including Tokyo, Shin-Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Shin-Osaka): more information in Japanese. Search for them in the relatively inconspicuous JR shops usually near the platform, not in the big bento shops. But beware: they state that meat or fish is not used as an ingredient except seasoning.

At the Hakata train station (Fukuoka-shi), there is a shop called Evah Dining selling delicious macrobiotic bentōs half of which are clearly labelled as vegetarian. (It is located at the ground floor few steps from the main concourse into the Amu/Hankyū passage. Ask at the station information if uncertain.)

If you happen to go to Kamakura, ask for vegetarian restaurant map at the tourist information centre at the main train station. (Kamakura is rather exceptional in this regard, though.)

Enjoy!

– Adam

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