Tourism Fukuoka to boost vegetarian and vegan restaurants

In light of the expected tourist boom this year, Fukuoka has started to boost the number of restaurants offering vegetarian and vegan dishes. Two weeks ago, the city held a taste-testing tour for food journalists and vegetarians to show off some of the new menus created. They tasted three items on the menu at the Japanese restaurant Ichiju-Issai Misonoha in Chuo Ward's Kego neighbourhood. These included rice balls topped with miso, and sea lettuce and tomato miso soup with broth using Rishiri Kombu from the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido.

Ichiju-Issai Misonoha's owner, Midori Kitagawa, explained that she has had foreign customers who disappointingly said, "I can't eat this," when they saw dishes using meat mixed with miso on the menu, unable to eat things such as pork due to their Islamic religion. Kitagawa said she would like to add the items featured during the tour to the regular menu. "Some Japanese people are vegetarian. I want to create dishes that can be enjoyed all the same by vegetarians and nonvegetarians."

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The city held a seminar in fiscal 2021 to help eateries respond to demand from vegans and vegetarians. In fiscal 2022, 25 restaurants developed new menu items under the tutelage of Hotel Okura Fukuoka's head chef.

Nice, but the fact is, well, I think anyway, people come here to eat raw fish, ramen and Japanese oysters. Also breaded tiger shrimp.

Plenty don't, or don't eat meat/seafood for various reasons. Lack of menu labelling and the lack of non-meat options where it would be easy to provide some make Japan appear backward and unable to deal with diversity. I've love to be able to order a meat-free vegetable stir-fry from restaurants!