Figuring out how to travel gluten free in Japan was not easy. Japan has been the most difficult country for us to find gluten free food for T, and the many Facebook groups dedicated to the topic confirm this.
Our 3-week itinerary of Japan is here.
There does not seem to be much awareness of celiac disease in Japan. In addition, many traditional ingredients like soy sauce and vinegar contain gluten.
Restaurants were particularly difficult for us. We used the “Gluten free restaurant card” smartphone app to communicate what T needed. The most common response was that the restaurant was not able to help, also when they had dishes on their menu that most likely would be gluten free.
The type of restaurant food that gave the most success was simple meat-based dishes, for example a steak with plain rice on the side.
Yakiniku is Japanese DIY barbecue that you grill at your own table. This allowed us the know exactly what meat and vegetables T was eating. In Kirishima, we had dinner twice at Wakimoto.
In supermarkets and convenience stores we found very little gluten free options. Google Lens is really good for translating, and ingredient lists generally told us when a product could contain traces of gluten.
Lawson has gluten free onigiri with salted plain rice and also with salmon flakes. T ate a lot of those. Often we brought the food back to our hotel.
We had brought gluten free oats from home. Matched with fruit juice from supermarkets, this was what T had for breakfast in most of the hotels we stayed.
We also brought many servings of Real Turmat dehydrated meals, that T used for lunches and dinners.
Several of the places we stayed were self-catering, and that was the most stress-free for us. We would have booked more self-catering stays if we had known how difficult it was going to be to eat out.
