Naha, Okinawa

November 4-7, 2025

   

After a wonderful visit with Matt and his wife, Michael and I moved on to Naha, Okinawa. This was a fascinating place, popular with Japanese tourists, and rich with its own distinct cultural traditions that draw from its Pacific geography and coral reefs, and centuries of trade with Japan, China, and Korea. We bounced between seeking veg-friendly foods from general vendors (soba, Nepalese, convenience stores and museum cafes) and visiting veg-specific venues. Here are a few highlights.

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We fell upon Mana with relief and delight after a string of improvised meals - each day they offer one vegan meal set, with an emphasis on local and organic ingredients, for ¥1500 ~ AU$14. We were blessed with a bowl of silky pumpkin soup, brown rice, a generous tumble of teriyaki soy meat, tempura shiso leaf, quinoa with green papaya, stir-fried bamboo and burdock (a new fave!), mustard greens and loofah in miso and vinegar, pickled rosella and green papaya, and a fresh wedge of dragonfruit to finish. The cafe was quiet, calm and spacious; everything we needed.

   

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Kuninda sat oddly on a street full of plastic souvenirs and gimmicky foods - it's a starkly modern, high-end restaurant that celebrates local Ryukyu cuisine. While omnivorous eaters a treated to a multi-stage banquet for dinner (and we observed our fellow diners' dishes with interest), veg*ns receive the same multi-dish plate that they would if attending for lunch (¥3500 ~ AU$34). It's still a very special experience with carefully composed local flavours.

We began with a small sample of Ryukyu moromi vinegar, a fermented by-product of the manufacture of awamori, a local spirit distilled from rice. (Among their non-alcoholic drinks was Shikuwasa juice, a native citrus, that I enjoyed very much.) The main plate was a beautiful selection not best photographed in the restaurant lighting: miso soup and rice, jimami tofu (made entirely of peanuts and not soy! has a more elastic texture and is lightly dressed in sweet soy), nigana (a green leafy vegetable) dressed with tofu and sesame (a familiar preparation style from Idées), deep-fried taro (a local staple), tempura vegetables, pickled vegetables including bitter gourd (another local staple), tofu sauteed with carrots, and a special salt-based seasoning. The meal concluded with a small taste of zenzai, sweetened red beans simmered in Okinawan brown sugar and salt, accompanied by jasmine tea.

The meal was very memorable and the service was flawless - the only shame was that, having been served most of it all at once, it was over too quickly.

   

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Our time in Okinawa was brief and, unluckily for us, was mostly spread across the weeknights that smaller venues aren't open. We were able to try Tamatebako for our last dinner - it's a small, densely-packed vegan ramen bar run by two jovial young men. More notable than the ramen was the array of local delicacies were tried there: more jimami/peanut tofu (¥700 ~ AU$7, above), a small cube of richly-textured and fermented tofuyo (¥700 ~ AU$7, below), and a bowl of sea grapes (¥600 ~ AU$6, below).

   

Michael had plenty of appetite to work through their coconut curry laksa (¥1400 ~ AU$13, below right), while I more slowly picked through a bowl of ma jiang mian (¥1400 ~ AU$13, below left), noodles in sesame paste topped with a welcome medley of tofu and fresh vegetables, and fine threads of chilli. The homemade ginger syrup (¥700 ~ AU$7, background) was much more ginger than syrup, and I nursed it across the entire meal. Michael finished with a taste of the awamori spirit on ice, of which they offered many varieties. We were glad to have such a cosy, distinctly Okinawan experience on our last night on the island.

   

Idées Kamakura

November 2, 2025  

   

In November, Michael and I made a long-overdue visit to Japan, where Michael's brother Matt has lived for almost two decades. It was fantastic to experience the neighbourhood where Matt and his wife live, including a couple of local restaurants, their community garden plot, a cultural festival, a short hike to a lookout for a picnic, and a sculpture garden. Matt also arranged for Michael and I to attend a vegan Japanese cooking class via Idées Kamakura. The class is hosted by 94-year-old Miyo sensei in her own home, and translated warmly into English by her daughter Naoko.

 

Once we were through introductions, Miyo sensei set us to work with chopping. They had cute little flower-shaped cutters for the carrots, which then went into a pot of kombu kelp dashi stock and sake, along with taro and pumpkin pieces, to simply simmer in the flavour.

Michael and I got to know gobo (also known as burdock in English), a long thin root vegetable with an earthy flavour. We kept the pieces submerged in cold water as we worked, and cut carrot into similarly small bite-sized lengths.

   

Naoko guided us through a tasting of different miso pastes, each with a unique origin, ratio of ingredients, and flavour profile. The Hatcho miso was dark, long-fermented and strongly flavoured, reminding me of Vegemite. Mugi barley miso was the lightest coloured option, with a gentle pungency that reminded me of blue cheese. My favourite was a bright, salty, golden-coloured and grainy textured miso. It was labelled 'miso zwate' but I haven't been able to find this description online since.

This now-mysterious miso was used in a dressing, ground together walnuts, mirin and sugar in my preferred ratio. In a second dressing, Naoko had me use soy sauce instead of miso. For a third dressing, I ground umeboshi (salted plum) with mirin and agave for a sweet and sour effect. We ultimately spooned a little of each into separate bowls of lightly steamed broccoli to appreciate their distinct flavours and textures.

   

The burdock and similarly-sliced carrots were stir-fried until tender and flavoured with sesame oil, sake, sugar and soy sauce. Miyo sensei got them started, then Michael and I took our turns tossing them around.

   

In parallel, Miyo sensei showed me how to grind roasted sesame seeds with suribachi and surikogi (traiditonal Japanese mortar and pestle), then mix in silken tofu. This mixture did double duty. First, it was seasoned with sugar, salt and soy sauce, and mixed with finely chopped vegetables to form a small, cool, salad side dish. Second, it was used to stuff potato starch-dusted mushroom caps as a 'mock abalone'; these were fried on both sides and brushed with teriyaki sauce.

I had whisked up the teriyaki sauce to taste (soy sauce, mirin and sugar). It was used primarily to flavour squares of pressed tofu that had been dusted with potato starch and fried until just golden. The tofu and mushroom caps are plated together, below.

   

Somehow (through Miyo's more than our efforts) a banquet was created! Steamed green beans and mushrooms appeared to accompany the simmered vegetables. Edamame were cooked into the rice in a large rice cooker, then moulded into a thick arc shape. There were pickled vegetables and huge, slightly sweet hana-mame beans, plus a beautiful tofu noodle soup.

   

It was a beautiful, expansive meal that I savoured slowly. Naoko spoke to us about the philosophy of Nihon Ryori (Japanese cuisine): five tastes, colours and methods. The aim is to capture a variety across the meal: sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter, pale/natural, umami; black, white, red, yellow, green; simmering; pan-frying, deep frying, stir frying, steaming, pickling, dressing, soup, rice, sweet.

To properly tick off that last category, there was still a little more to come.

   

Miyo sensei kneaded a dense dough of shiratamako (refined glutinous rice powder) and water, and we all gathered around to form small dumplings and drop them into boiling water. They only took a minute to cook! We ate them for dessert with unflavoured kanten (agar agar jelly cubes), sweet azuki beans, and black sugar syrup. After taking the below photo, I also sprinkled over some kinako (soybean powder).

   

It was such an honour to learn from Miyo sensei and Naoko in their home! They welcomed us with warmth and immense generosity, we deeply enjoyed the food that we shared, and we've started replicating a couple of these techniques at home.

Fukuoka

September 4-10, 2016

It's been a quiet week on the blog, but those following us on twitter and facebook will have seen some updates from Fukuoka, Japan, where I've been attending a conference. My host was kind and persistent in securing vegetarian food for me, quizzing cooks several times daily in Japanese about dashi. In turn most chefs were equally generous in making me something off-menu, checking food labels and asking questions of their own accord. 

I enjoyed my usual inari and pickled plum onigiri from the convenience stores. We happened upon soft tofu served in a balloon, lovely braised Chinese vegetables, and tempura on udon. I drank several kinds of sake and ate sweet, pillowy omelettes. There's little I can share that any other non-Japanese speaking vegetarian in Fukuoka could take up and try for themselves - just one small restaurant called Ethnic café Bõ. It's a Vietnamese eatery where the chef knows exactly what vegetarian and vegan foods are, and is all set to prepare multiple versions of them.

It was the rare week where my vegetarian diet felt restricting, but this was tempered with gratitude for the many people who went out of their way to accommodate me.

Other short notes on Japan

April 3-11, 2015

This final post from our week-long holiday in Japan is a semi-random round-up that will probably be interesting to our readers, but don't fit our usual recipe/restaurant blog format. Here's some advice for vegos in Japan in bullet points.

1) Arrange pocket wi-fi before you turn up. There are a whole bunch of companies who will rent you a mobile wi-fi device (smaller than a phone), delivering it either to the airport or your hotel with a reply-paid envelope to return it in. This will mean your phones can access the internet at almost all times, so that navigating Tokyo's impenetrable address system and astonishing subway map is much more straightforward. This is the first time we've done this while travelling, and it was the best decision we made (for the record we used these guys, but it was a panicky last-minute decision - do your research!).

2) Having arranged pocket wi-fi, go right ahead and download the Happy Cow app - it will point you to nearby veggie (and veg-friendly) places, will give you directions and will make eating out in Tokyo a relative breeze. It costs a few bucks, but it's money well spent (and can then be used on future trips to other cities/countries!).

3) Convenience stores are your friend. We relied on FamilyMart and 7-11 for quite a few meals - they've always got inari and onigiri (this site is helpful for figuring out your vego options at convenience stores). They've also got all manner of snacks and sweets for when you just need to eat something made of sugar or salt.

4) The basement of department stores are gigantic food courts, with shops of all kinds serving up whatever treats you can imagine. From fresh fruit and veg to mochi, from pastry shaped like a lion to fancy chocolate, there's everything you can imagine available (the basement at Isetan was our favourite on this trip).

5) Make a side trip to Kappabashi Street if you visit the temples in Asakusa. It's the kitchen goods district of Tokyo, and there are a handful of shops that specialise in plastic food models that are great fun to browse through. They're a wonderful source of kitschy gifts too, but be prepared to spend a decent wodge of money - crafting lifelike noodles out of plastic doesn't come cheap.

6) Freshness Burger are a handy source of a vegetarian meal (although probably not a vegan one). There are nearly 200 locations in Japan, including a handy one in the new Jetstar terminal at Narita airport. The bean-based veggie burger and fries tided us over before our flight down to Takamatsu.

7) Toys! We went a bit crazy for toys in Tokyo. It's probably wise not to chase your losses in the toy vending machines because you want a very particular type of cat-sushi toy, but these are hard lessons to live by in the moment. We also fell madly in love with Gudetama, the lazy egg-yolk member of the Hello Kitty family - he's hard to miss if you hang out in the shops like Kiddyland (in Harajuku), a five-storey toy shop that should be on everybody's itinerary.

8) Vending machines are a reliable source of heavily sweetened caffiene-based beverages. Tokyo has a few hip coffee places around, but the pickings are much slimmer than Melbourne and I got lazy and quickly resorted to a mix of iced and hot coffee drinks from colourful machines. You can get them milky or black, but they're all loaded with sugar.

And that's it! We had a great time in Japan again - it's not the easiest country to be vegetarian in, but the pay-off is worth the bit of effort that goes into planning (and the semi-regular convenience store snacking). Hopefully there are some useful tidbits in this post, and throughout our restaurant-related posts for others making the journey. Enjoy!

Hang Out

April 10, 2015

On Friday afternoon we snagged the matinee session at the Robot Restaurant, one of Tokyo's cheesiest tourist attractions (see the slideshow below for a hint of the neon pantomime we experienced). We held off on the popcorn and sought out snacks afterwards from Hang Out, a laid-back surfer-inspired vegan bar in Shibuya.

An English printed menu full of photos was available, so we had no problem browsing independently. Before Matt even arrived we demolished a plate of seasoned fries'n'sauce (480円 ~ $5.15). Stomachs thus lined, we were more polite in sharing many more bar snacks over an hour or two, including the hemp potato croquettes (580円 ~ $6.20) and a saucer of kimchi (580円 ~ $6.20).

The rainbow vegetable salad (880円 ~ $9.40) was a gesture towards fresh vegetables that really paid off, the abundant fresh greens decorated with pretty and refreshing radishes, and pots of avocado and sesame-based dressings besides. The gyoza (580円 ~ $6.20) were pretty good too, but we didn't figure out the dipping sauce protocol in time.

Our mock meat of choice (Jamaican jerk vegan chicken) was sadly sold out but there were plenty of others to choose from. The Japanese fried wheat gluten (680円 ~ $7.30) reminded me of Fry's, and was garnished with pickles, soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce. The fried tofu with tartar sauce (880円 ~ $9.40) was a surprise stand-out, with some lively seasoning and crunchy snow pea sprouts.

The staff spoke English well and were very relaxed. We happily loitered at Hang Out through a couple cycles of customers, watching the wall projection shift from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Dead Man and loop around to Dead Man once more. It was the ideal haven from the bright lights and city sounds on yet another rainy night.

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Hang Out
Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Udagawa-cho, 3-12 RIKA Building 3rd Floor, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
03-64553562
standard menu, daily specials

Accessibility: Hang Out is located up a couple of flights of narrow stairs; we didn't see an alternative entry. Inside tables are well spaced and it's quite dimly lit. We ordered at our table and paid at a high counter. The toilet is elevated by one or two steps, unisex, and narrow.

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Saishoku Kenbi

April 10, 2015

Our trip to Tokyo coincided with another vego friend's holiday, so we arranged to meet up for lunch on Friday at Saishoku Kenbi, in the Korean neighbourhood near Shinjuku. We visited this place for lunch on our first trip, but they've switched things around since then from buffet meals to a la carte. The restaurant is attached to a small Buddhist temple and is tucked away down some back streets - keep your eyes peeled for the green sign and the happy white Buddha to guide you there.

The interior is plain - the buffet table has been replaced by more tables for diners, but otherwise not much has changed. The staff speak minimal English and the menu is all in Japanese but it's clearly illustrated, and thus relatively easy to figure out what to order. The food on offer is a mix of Western-inspired stuff (sandwiches, spaghetti bol, pizza, etc.) and more Japanese-style food (dumplings, noodle soups, rice-based dishes).

Cindy ordered the set lunch (1300円 ~ $14), which was a combination of the two traditions - miso soup and rice, served with a British-style Sunday roast and a little coleslaw-ish salad with a wonderful nutty dressing. The miso soup was loaded up with veggies and herbs and a lighter broth than what we'd had with our previous lunch sets. The roast had a meatloafy texture and was slathered in a rich soy-based gravy. The set came with a cup of tea, a couple of bikkies and some fruit as well, and was probably the best value meal of our trip.

The rest of us all ordered soupy lunches (780円 ~ $8.40). There's a mushroom soup, a hammy soup and the one I ordered - a curry laksa-style soup. This was just what I was after - spicy and warming, with plenty of veggies and and minced mock meat sharing the soup with the noodles. I also grabbed a small taste of Cass' mushroom soup and it was excellent as well.

Sishoku Kenbi is a must-visit - it's cheap, the food is excellent, the staff are lovely and you can even stock up on frozen mock meat and other veggie groceries if you're looking for home-cooking ingredients. I'm a bit sad that the buffet-style lunches are over, but there's still an excellent value meal to be had here.

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Read about our first visit to Saishoku Kenbi here. Only Mindful Wanderlust and Japan Vegan seem to have blogged about this place since our first visit.

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Saishoku Kenbi 

2-21-26 Hyakunin-cho, Shinjyuku-ku

03 5332 3627

set lunch, menu pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

http://daisho-kikaku.com/

Accessibility: There's one small step up on entry. The restaurant is reasonably spacious, with orders taken at the table and payment at a high counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

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Patisserie Potager

April 8, 2015

Our morning in Kamimeguro was wet and bookended with food failures. First, Michael navigated us towards vegetarian cafe Rainbow Bird Rendezvous for an early lunch. The only word we could read from the hand-written sign on the door was 'Wednesday', but it was pretty clear that they were closed especially for that day, a Wednesday. Later we circled the suburb twice trying to locate Potager Marche before confirming that it had been replaced by a barbecue restaurant. In between, there was a warm dry refuge and cake at Patisserie Potager.

We visited Patisserie Potager last year, and I was keen to try more of their pretty vegetable-charged desserts. The burdock gateau chocolat (470 円 ~ $4.90) was a little dry in the crumb but balanced out with a cream dollop. Tiny cubes of roasted burdock added texture and only the subtlest flavour to the cake.

The Japanese leek baked cheese cake (470 円 ~ $4.90) was bolder, the dense dairy giving way to a squishy centre of caramelised leek. Melding sweet and savoury this well takes skill.

For all the frustration around it, I'm so glad we were able to return to Patisserie Potager. These vegetable-based desserts might be a silly novelty, but they're also damn delicious.

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You can read about our first visit to Patisserie Potager here. Since then it has received mostly positive write-ups on A traveling foodie's gastronomic diary from around the world... and 도쿄 동경 베쯔니 블로그 (in Korean).

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Patisserie Potager
2 Chome-44-9 Kamimeguro, Meguro, Tokyo 153-0051, Japan
03 6279 7753
http://www.potager.co.jp/

Accessibility: Entry is flat from the street and tables are moderately spaced. All the cakes are displayed at a low-to-medium height. I ordered and paid at a high counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Brown Rice Cafe

April 7, 2015

We wound up spending Tuesday afternoon and evening wandering around Harajuku buying plastic toys and other ridiculousness (Kiddy Land toy store is a must-visit if you want to load up on Gudetama-related goodies). The rain kept coming down, meaning we just wanted somewhere nearby for dinner - luckily Brown Rice Cafe was right around the corner.

Brown Rice is attached to British organic cosmetics shop Neal's Yard, and is tucked down a little laneway just to the North of Omotesando station. Like seemingly everywhere in Tokyo, it's much easier to find if you have a detailed map/functioning mobile phone. The layout is sleek and spare - wooden floorboards and tables elegantly arranged, with some nice botanical prints on the walls. There are English menus - vego restaurants in Tokyo seem to be well aware that a big chunk of their market is foreigners. The food is macrobiotic, and heavy on the veggies - you can enjoy a terrine made of 10 kinds of vegetables (1200円 ~ $13) or a mix of veggies cooked using the five principles of Japanese cooking (1300円 ~ $14.10). There are intriguing sounding tofu tasting plates (800円 ~ $8.70), salads and a range of other small plates.

I'm not sure if it's standard or not, but this cute little square of sesame tofu and crackers came out with our drinks (beer for me and a 700円 ~ $7.50 tangerine juice for Cindy) - the tofu was smooth and the sesame flavour worked well with the light sauce it was served with.

We took the easy option and ordered the brown rice dinner set - brown rice, miso soup, some sides and a choice of main for 1700円 (~$18.40) The options on our visit were steamed vegetables, Okinawa-style tofu cutlets or miso dengaku - we chose the cutlets and the dengaku and shared them.

The miso dengaku was a serve of lightly grilled tofu with a strong miso sauce splotched on top, served with an impressive array of pickled vegetables and greens. It was all pretty simple, but I really enjoyed it - the seasoning on the brown rice was a surprising highlight. The Okinawa-style tofu reminded me of crumbed fish as much as anything, right down to the sweet mayo and lemon juice.

We managed to leave just enough room to squeeze in a shared dessert - the tofu lemon cake with berry coulis (750円 ~ $8).

This was a solid rendition of the vegan cheesecake format - they clearly know their way around tofu.

We had a lovely dinner at Brown Rice. The atmosphere is a peaceful escape from the madness of Harajuku and Omotesando and the food is artfully prepared. You're probably best off ignoring the slightly mystical claims in the menu, but the mix of tofu, pickled and fresh veggies, miso soup and brown rice did feel like a healthy way to finish the day.

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Brown Rice Cafe has received uniformly positive reviews - see Bon Voyage Vegan, bebe & us, tokyo eats, Miss.Neverfull, universotokyo, JoJo + Japan, Vegetablian, Vegetus, Pocket Witch, Megan Mastriani, Vegan in Brighton, The Vegan Ronin, 101 Cookbooks, Sweet Potato Soul, The Expat Wife and Kittens Gone Lentil.

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Brown Rice Cafe
Green Bldg 1F, 5-1-17 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku
03 5778 5416

dessert + dinner, dinner, dinner set mains, drinks 1, drinks 2, food sources, manifesto 1, manifesto 2

http://www.nealsyard.co.jp/brownrice/

Accessibility: There are a few steps up on entrance. The interior is spacious and there's full table service. We didn't visit the toilets.

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Olu 'Olu Cafe

April 6, 2015

Given that I was working on our first day in Tokyo, I spent the third one wallowing in cherry blossoms for hours (see slideshow below). I was still glowing (and, let's be honest, a little sunburnt) when we met up with Matt for dinner in Sangenjaya. Michael had picked out Olu 'Olu Cafe, a small vegan restaurant with a Hawai'ian theme, decorated with palm fronds, surfboards and fairy lights.

The staff were able to supply us with an entirely English menu and it proved extensive and varied - macrobiotic soups and greens, natto, Hawai'ian and Indonesian fried mock meats and bruschetta appeared on the specials board alone!

I was impressed by the list of non-alcoholic beverages too, which included flavoured vegan milks, teas and sodas. Their iced ginger lemonade (650円 ~ AU$6.10) struck a perfect balance of fruity sourness and a little throaty heat, and was served unsweetened with syrup on the side.

We started out with a plate of pungent garlic edamame (830円 ~ AU$9.00) and sucked as much flavour from the pods as we could. The boiled macrobiotic greens of the day (360円 ~ AU$3.90) were less shareable than we'd hoped, but nonetheless vibrant, tender and expertly seasoned with soy.

We each went our separate ways for mains. Michael had an excellent Mochiko chicken bowl (1030円 ~ AU$11.20) - battered mock chicken pieces in a sweet and spicy sauce served with brown rice and fresh salad, hailed as 'one of the major Hawaiian local foods'. Matt's fish'n'chips (880円 ~ AU$9.60) were less Hawai'ian but just as delicious, with flaky fillets of bean curd skin. My pork and ginger bowl (930円 ~ AU$10.10) didn't conjure up the promised spice but was comforting regardless.

The staff were unfailingly friendly (and explicitly welcome pets too!) and I was sad that we were unlikely to make it back to try more of the menu.

We capped off the night with some bar-hopping, most memorably at corridor-sized Queensland. The bar owner was a lovely and youthful septuagenarian with fond memories of the Gold Coast, a generous supply of burdock pickles and sweets, and penchant for karaoke.

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Olu 'Olu Cafe has been blogged previously and positively on 25Cafes.com, Bon Voyage Vegan and TOFUsenshi.

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Olu 'Olu Cafe
1-11-1 Ikejiri, Setagaya-ku, Sangenjaya, Tokyo, Japan
03 3795 6060
specials, appetisers, mains 1, mains 2, drinks, info
http://ameblo.jp/oluolucafe

Accessibility: Olu 'Olu has a flat entry and a crowded interior. We ordered at the table and paid at a high counter. The toilet is inside, narrow and unisex.

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Komaki Syokudo

April 6, 2015

After a morning spent soaking up the cherry blossoms in Shinjuku Gyoen, Cindy and I set off for an afternoon of video games, anime and nerd culture in Akihabara (see a few highlights in the slideshow at the end of this post). We kicked things off with lunch, at a venue whose quiet vibe was at odds with the rest of the neighbourhood: Komaki Syokudo. This is another place that's quite tricky to locate - the address that Google Maps gave us was clearly wrong, but the Happy Cow directions and map were bang on. The restaurant is attached to a fancy grocery store under the train lines in the Chabara building, and it's well worth wandering through the store after you've eaten to marvel at all the interesting ingredients on offer.

Komaki Syokudo is tucked over on the right hand side of the supermarket and is fairly unassuming. There are a handful of tables, a counter with clearly displayed food options and not much else. There's an English menu, which makes figuring out the system pretty easy. For a set lunch you order one dish from the middle shelf and two dishes from the bottom shelf; throw in miso soup and a bowl of rice and lunch will set you back 980円 (~$10.60). If you're hungrier, you can order the full set of 9 dishes for 1530円 (~$16.50). In either case, choosing brown rice over white will add an extra 150円 (~$1.60) to the price. The cuisine-style is shōjin ryōri, done a lot cheaper than the high-end versions we've had in the past.

We split our meals - on the left above is fried gluten (top shelf) with a mushroom and greens dish plus a curry-seasoned lentil-cabbage dish. On the right, a crumbed rice croquette with a mushroom, carrot and bean salad plus another side we couldn't really identify, based on some sort of mashed root vegetable. It was simple but delicious, with one of the best miso soups of the trip and some nice seasoning on hand to add some punch to the rice.

We wandered happily around the neighbouring grocery store afterwards, scoping out all the amazing ingredients on sale (but saving our money for the toy shopping to come). Komaki Syokudo is a relaxing way to prepare yourself for the hectic madness of the rest of Akihabara - it's the perfect starting or ending point for a few hours of wandering the streets.

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Both Japan Vegan and Sweet Potato Soul were impressed by Komaki Syokudo.

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Komaki Syokudo
8-2 Kanda Neribeicho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan 101-0022 (in the Chabara building)
menu: one, two
http://konnichiha.net/komakishokudo/english.html

Accessibility: There are a couple of steps up as you come into the building. The restaurant area is small and a little crowded. You order and pay at a high counter. The toilets are located in the nearby supermarket and are gendered.

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Banwarou

April 5, 2015

We spent the afternoon in Yokohama dodging the drizzle where we could, walking by Kanamara Matsuri and the port, grabbing some bar snacks (including burdock chips! recommended) and focusing on Chinatown (there are a few photos in a slideshow below). We sought out Banwarou for dinner, a Taiwanese restaurant mentioned on Happy Cow.

Although Banwarou serves meat and does not have menu printed in English, it's not too hard to cobble together a veg-friendly feast. 'Vegetarian' is printed on the door and the restaurant owner is keen to assist in limited but enthusiastic English and a side of gesticulation, including a check on whether or not we eat eggs. Inside and out, the walls are lined with photos of their food, and one side is especially dedicated to their vegetarian options.

Our haphazard pointing brought rich rewards - crispy spring rolls (650円 ~ AU$7.00), mochi (which we are more accustomed to calling radish cakes, 650円 ~ AU$7.00), gyoza (650円 ~ AU$7.00) and stir-fried soy beef and mixed vegetables in a salty cornflour-thickened sauce (1890円 ~ AU$20.40).

One of the highlights was a plate of slippery, sweet chilli eggplant (1470円 ~ AU$15.90), which reminded us of the fish-flavoured eggplant in Melbourne's Dainty Sichuan.

The fabulous finale was pulled off with the help of a bilingual vegan Kiwi at another table. At his and the restaurant owner's joint recommendation, we ordered the vego mapo tofu (1100円 ~ AU$11.90) and the sesame noodles (850円 ~ AU$9.20); tossing but not stirring the sesame noodles with chopsticks, then scooping the two dishes into our individuals bowls as a saucy, hearty, rich and spicy melange.

Without Happy Cow's help, we would've walked right past Banwarou - many of the meal photos are meaty and the interior is cramped with few apparent frills. But the restaurant's warm and outgoing owner is undoubtedly its best feature, with the veg-friendly food a firm second.

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Banwarou has also been blogged by Vegan Marathon Runner.

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Banwarou
139 Yamashita-cho, Naka-ku, Yokohama, Japan
045 663 3113

Accessibility: The entry is flat and the interior is small and very densely packed. We ordered and paid at our table. The toilet is inside, narrow and unisex.

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