No pork, no alcohol豚肉・お酒を摂らない方へ
Show the card and ask before you order. Which dishes are safe, which ones hide pork in the soup, and the two-second way to make it clear to the staff.
Show the card and ask before you order. Which dishes are safe, which ones hide pork in the soup, and the two-second way to make it clear to the staff.
Japanese food is not built on pork, but pork turns up in places you would not expect — in soup stock, in a fried dumpling, in a sauce. This page tells you which dishes are safe, which to ask about, and the words that make it clear in two seconds.
Short English works in most places, and pointing works everywhere. Where a Japanese phrase is genuinely more useful, it is here — and only where it is short enough to say out loud on the first try.
Say it before you order, not after the food arrives.
Point, and you will eat well here.
A printed card in English and Japanese, shown to the staff, ends the conversation in five seconds and removes any doubt about what you meant.
Six cards: no pork, no beef, no alcohol, no raw fish, no shellfish, vegetarian. Print them before you travel, or save them to your phone.
Plain, cheap places serving one fish or chicken set at a time. The easiest kind of restaurant to eat in when you are avoiding something.
Open all night, everywhere, with ingredients printed on the label. Rice triangles, boiled eggs, salad, fruit. A safe fallback at 2am in any town.
They exist in the larger cities and near some mosques, and the number is growing. Ask your hotel to telephone ahead — they will explain what you need.
Eat your main meal at lunch. Restaurants are quieter, the same food costs less, and staff have more time to answer a question about what is in the soup. By eight in the evening a busy counter has no time to check for you.
| Prefecture | Eat this | |
|---|---|---|
| Kumamoto | Basashi (raw horse), akaushi beef, karashi-renkon, ikinari dango | Restaurants |
| Hokkaido | Crab, scallops, salmon roe on rice, grilled corn, soup curry with chicken | Hokkaido |
| Toyama / Ishikawa | Sushi from the bay, grilled yellowtail, snow crab in winter | Toyama |
| Mie | Matsusaka beef, grilled abalone, Ise udon (ask about the stock) | Mie |
| Hyogo | Kobe beef, Akashi octopus, snow crab at Kinosaki | Hyogo |
| Kochi | Seared bonito, grilled fish over straw, river fish | Kochi |
| Kyoto | Tofu courses, pickles, yuba, vegetable temple food | Kyoto |
| Aomori | Scallops, tuna from Oma, apples and apple pie | Aomori |