The Veg Travel Guide to Japan is the first ever complete country travel guide to be written especially for vegans. It presents everything needed for a travelling vegan to enjoy an easy and rewarding trip to Japan. Unlike traditional vegan guides which focus on food and restaurants, this guidebook recommends both tourist attractions and vegan restaurants, and they are carefully compiled into practical, efficient itineraries tailored to vegan travellers. It also covers practical information on travelling in Japan, such as the many different types of accommodation on offer, public transport systems, and discount passes. There is also a chapter on the politics, culture and history of Japan, all written from a vegan perspective.
This guidebook was fully updated in February 2024, with most changes relating to the drastic price increase of the Japan Rail Pass. It's now more economical for most tourists to instead buy a range of smaller rail passes and/or one-way flights within Japan, so the Travel Practicalities chapter and the public transport sections for the affected areas have been updated to reflect this. As always, there have been price increases due to inflation and the ever-weakening yen, and sadly one pioneer vegan restaurant in Tokyo (Nagi Shokudo) has closed permanently. The book received a minor update in March, following the closure of 2Foods, a fast-food restaurant in Tokyo Station.
Japan is famously difficult for vegans (and vegetarians), but centuries of Buddhist vegetarianism have also produced one of the world's most incredible vegan cuisines. For foreign tourists who are not familiar with the Japanese language, infrastructure, or culinary traditions, using this guidebook should save many hours of planning and minimise frustrations and disappointments around food and many other aspects of travel in Japan.
This guidebook covers the most popular tourist destinations in Japan, including Tokyo City and its surrounding tourist destinations (Yokohama, Kamakura, Nikko, Saitama), Nagano (Hakuba, Matsumoto, and Karuizawa), Hokkaido (Sapporo, Niseko Ski Resort and Furano), Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Kobe, Koyasan, Himeji Castle, Hiroshima and Kagoshima. Each section includes tourist attractions, vegan or vegan-friendly restaurants, and all the information required for the trip, such as preparation, timing, and public transport options for travellers with and without Japan Rail Passes.
What's Not Covered?
This first edition does not cover Nagasaki, which is much less vegan-friendly than Hiroshima and is further from the main tourist route, so I recommend vegan and vegetarian travellers go to Hiroshima instead. It also doesn't cover the island chain of Okinawa, which is popular for its beach resorts during summer. The book covers climbing Mount Fuji (as a day or overnight trip from Tokyo) but it does not include the surrounding Fuji Five Lakes region, which is incredibly beautiful but is difficult to travel around without private transport.
This authentic work is the product of many months of full-time research and several dedicated research trips to Japan. In order to produce an authentic guidebook and offer the most reliable information possible to my readers, I pay for my meals and accommodation myself and never accept any form of incentives for listings or recommendations, a policy I have had for my guidebooks and blogs for the decade that I have maintained them. Most restaurant and hotel staff assume I am a regular tourist, as this way I can review the experience which my readers will have if I deem it to be worth including in the guidebook. As a sign of authenticity, I took all the photographs in the book myself in Japan. For an explanation of what Vegan Travel Guides are and how they are different from regular vegan guides, with a focus on the Japan edition, please watch: https://tinyurl.com/VTGVIDEO
And for reviews of my Taiwan guidebook, please visit: https://tinyurl.com/VGNTWN
