[duxinco]

We were in Japan this past June: I am vegan at home but vegetarian when we travel, I speak Japanese (not fluent, but comfortable), and I found it VERY difficult to eat even vegetarian. It’s not impossible, but it is hard and it requires vigilance. (GF is REALLY hard there.)  In Japanese I would explain no dashi, no bonito, and still things would arrive clearly made with dashi (the smell) and / or covered in heaps of bonito. One of my sons doesn’t eat fish and he started feeling really discouraged when things kept arriving inedible. And he’s a competitive rock climbing teenager, so he eats A LOT.

 

You don’t say where in Japan you’re going, but a few of the vegan-friendly places we did find were, as you wrote, not Accessible (like up a flight of stairs). However, I have to say that every place we went the staff were so kind, so helpful in offering to carry our son in his chair (son + chair = 105lbs / ~48kg) up and down. Really lovely.

 

Now, there is a chain called Ippudo which will make (even if not on their menu) a DELICIOUS bowl of vegan ramen: we ate at two of them, one in Kyoto and one in Hiroshima, and both were Accessible. By Accessible, I mean flat-ish entry, and they moved things around to accommodate my son’s chair (and us parents who feed him).

 

We did see a lot of Italian restaurants (throughout Japan), so that could work for you — pasta with tomato sauce. And Indian-Nepali restaus: we ate at one in Takayama which was totally Accessible. (The food was not amazing but we were eating Indian in Takayama, so ….)

 

GOOD LUCK and have a wonderful trip!