Apart from the whole not eating meat thing, I usually consider myself pretty open to trying new foods. However, in Japan, I found myself as picky as an entitled toddler! I feel a little ashamed to write this post, if I’m honest, but I want to share my true experience.

We cruised around Japan with Celebrity Cruises in spring of 2024, and I was very glad I had some more familiar food to come back to on the ship each night. I hate how that makes me sound, but I just wasn’t enticed by the traditional Japanese food.

Japanese cuisine is very seafood-heavy. They put fish flakes in so many things, which is a big turn-off for me! What’s more, much of the information I found online before we went explained that vegetarianism is a newer concept in Japan, and so you can’t always trust “vegetarian” to mean the same thing there that it does in the US.

For that reason alone, I never felt truly comfortable unless I’d already researched the restaurant in question. That obviously made things difficult. I always look up restaurant options before a trip, but we don’t always end up in the right areas at mealtimes. It was also harder to find Japanese-style vegetarian-friendly places away from the tourist cities. Happy Cow showed some options, but often they were different cuisines. I love Thai and Indian food, etc., but when I’m in a country, I want to experience their native food as much as possible.

So what did I end up eating? I’ll show you!

Tokyo

On our first afternoon in Japan after a very long flight, we decided to start with the world-famous konbini, or convenience store. We found a Lawson, one of three major konbini brands in Japan.

It was a lot of fun, actually! Not a ton of savory things I found super enticing, but I was ready to try the hotly-discussed egg salad sandwich! The sweets all looked super intriguing, too, and were difficult to choose from. Kevin got chicken.

The sandwich was indeed awesome!! So much so, that I ended up having four more over the next three days! It didn’t matter from which konbini – they were all great!

The Azuki (red bean paste) pancake was also really good, if a little unusual for me.

Later that evening we stopped at the Kabukicho Tower Food Court, but did not find any vegetarian dishes, so we didn’t eat there. Too bad, because the vibe was really cool.

Throughout Shinjuku and back to our hotel area of Shibuya, we didn’t come across any restaurants from my list, and since I couldn’t verify that whatever I ordered would be truly vegetarian, we just decided to bring more konbini food back to our hotel room.

It isn’t the way I like to travel, but I just couldn’t stomach the idea of accidentally eating fish, so I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it. Kevin, thankfully, didn’t seem to mind (he is not vegetarian, but he doesn’t eat seafood either).

I ended up with a corn mayonnaise bread thing (which was not the best), melon bread (tasty), and chips.

The next day we woke early to visit Sansoji and grabbed MORE konbini food on the way. This is when I had another egg salad sandwich!

But then lunchtime arrived, and I finally ate some actual Japanese food! I told Kevin it was a non-negotiable to make it to one of the T’s Tantan locations for vegetarian ramen during this trip.

It was satisfying, for sure! But this was when I started to realize that maybe Japanese food just isn’t my favorite. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the meal, and the presentation was delightful, but I just didn’t love it as much as I thought I would. Kevin really liked his, though.

By the time we ended up at Don Quijote, we were ready for a snack, and Kevin was very excited to try the cheese coin.

We split it, and it was actually really good! I think I’d been missing cheese at this point, and having it in a sort of pancake vessel was a wonderful surprise!

Our last meal before we hopped aboard our cruise ship was at a place Kevin picked out. It was called Age.3, and it was a small restaurant that was a little hard to find, but once we found the street, it was recognizable by the line outside.

At Age.3 they make fried sandwiches. They deep-fry individual pieces of bread, slice the middle open, and stuff with all sorts of fillings. They were delicious!

They had savory and sweet flavor combinations! We got five of them to share because we couldn’t make up our minds.

The strawberry one was so good!!

Kansai region

In the next 2.5 days we visited Nara, Osaka, and Kyoto. In Kyoto, I had a few different options sourced ahead of time, and we had lunch at Chao Chao Gyoza. This was one of my favorite meals from Japan.

The restaurant was very small, but it felt very traditional, which was nice after all those konbini meals.

I ordered a vegetarian set lunch that came with one side and two gyozas. I chose tofu for my side.

We had a great time and ate really well! I wish I could’ve tried a few more restaurants here, since there were several veg-friendly options.

That evening in Osaka, I really struggled. It was the end of a very long day, and we just wanted to see the Dotonbori area at night before calling it a day. We would’ve grabbed a bite, but everything was seafood that we saw. Our feet hurt too much to consider walking any further away.

We did end up getting a strawberry snack, though.

We ate dinner back on our ship.

The next day after a refreshing night’s sleep, we hit up another place that I’d found for us. Definitely not what one might think of as traditional Japanese food, but “fluffy pancake” was indeed on my checklist of things to eat in Japan.

“A Happy Pancake” did not disappoint! Kevin thought each order was one pancake, so we ordered three kinds. Surprise, there were actually three pancakes per plate! But in true American fashion, we ate just about all of it! I think we left behind a half of one pancake!

We got Milk Tea, Berry, and Tiramisu.

They were all SO GOOD!

Hiroshima

This was a late day in port, and we tried to cram a lot in. I had originally wanted to go to Okonomimura (it sounded like an okonomiyaki food court), but towards the end of the day, we found we didn’t have time. We chose to prioritize the atomic bomb memorial area and museum instead.

But we did get to have a snack earlier! On Miyajima, we did find a stall selling vegetarian okonomiyaki on a stick! I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. It was kind of rubbery.

Northern Japan

Hakodate was another tricky one. I hadn’t found any enticing veg-friendly restaurants during my research, so we decided to wing it. We didn’t find any Japanese restaurants we felt comfortable trying, though, and ate back on the ship.

Delicious-looking sweets were, again, not hard to find, though.

Aomori was similar. But Kevin wanted to try out the 7-Eleven microwave meals, so we made that a priority here. He had a blast taste-testing.

I ate too many sweets again: apple slices, mini waffles, and cookie dough that I couldn’t pass up. Pretty unhealthy, I know.

Mt. Fuji Region

Due to the distance between port and Mt. Fuji, and the lack of quick public transportation, we decided to do a group tour to visit the magnificent volcano.

We had time for a food truck snack at our first stop, so we got fried cheese! Just like home! Well, kinda.

At our next stop we had time to eat a bigger portion, but again from a food truck.

Here I got something that I’d say is one of the weirdest, yet surprisingly tasty lunches I’ve had abroad. It was a “cheese corndog.” The inside was all cheese, the outside was a potatoey breading, and then it was drizzled with ketchup, mustard, and SUGAR!

What a bizarre combo, but it worked!! It was more cheese and breading, like our earlier snack, but all the other options had meat in them, and I was just glad to be able to eat something!

I was also able to try some dango. It was not bad at all!

Tokyo Haneda airport

There was one major thing on my checklist that I hadn’t gotten to try yet; tempura! Thankfully, our gate in the airport was right by a restaurant selling vegetable tempura and noodles!

It was so yummy, and an excellent way to end our time in Japan.

While I didn’t get as far out of my food comfort zone as I would’ve liked while in Japan, I still got to try several vegetarian versions of traditional foods that I wanted to.

The food didn’t end up being the highlight of my trip (that would have to be the architecture), but that’s okay. I’m not going to love everything in every country. It’s just a matter of tastes. Kevin and I still had a fantastic trip and enjoyed our interactions with everyone we met. Japan is a beautiful country, and we both recommend it if you’re considering traveling there.