Experience chasing after vegetarian restaurants in Japan
Finding true vegetarian places is a challenge in some parts of the world. In general Europe and eastern europe recognize the notion of vegetarianism. More than 3 decades ago vegetarianism was an alien concept even in USA.
Just for fun I want to share a recent experience at Japan in chasing after a vegetarian restaurant. I had a business trip to places like Tokyo and Okinawa, my daughter had a research conference where she was presenting a paper in one of the places and my wife had some work in Japan as well. So we kind of made this visit a part vacation trip which raised the expectation of wanting good food. It was also the first visit to Japan for my daughter.
After a week or so we were really struggling to find vegetarian food that was more than just some Soba noodles and some soy sauce!
The hotel we were staying at Okinawa told us about a place which was somewhat far. The fellow at the Hotel concierge showed me a little pamphlet with words like 'moo moo we love vegetables - we are vegetarians etc' - the menu was in Japanese and except for the English in the title we had no idea what to expect. We coughed up an expensive ride to this place via a cab.
When we landed, this place looked no different than any other meat/fish place. Finally we found someone who spoke some English. I told them we were expecting a Buddhist type vegetarian place and we were surprised at what they seem to be serving. The smell was not very tolerable. The person explained the caption in the front of their menu booklet saying that their cows are vegetarians and the cows are saying they love vegetables
. But they serve meat only for their guests. This was ridiculous - we were laughing, hungry and frustrated that we took this long trip for this silly place.
The Japanese are good hosts and they offered to make something special. We told them to not include anything that ever moved or could move. They smiled, had a lot discussions and seated us.
Then they put out plates, fork and knife. Then they brought something I have never seen at a dinner table. They gave us each a pair of scissors!!
The main course was a huge head of cabbage boiled in water and seated in the middle of the table. The scissors were provided to cut the cooked cabbage, dip in soy sauce and eat it. The served one carrot nicely decorated. It was chef special and very expensive. It was late and we were very hungry. So we ordered another cabbage and some butter
Later we did find a good Punjabi restaurants in Tokyo and managed fine in other places like Kyoto . Our expectations had been lowered significantly and we were happy if we saw a sandwich shop in American style.
The positive side of this experience is that we all had lost about 3 to 5 pounds each
