Skip to main content

Some Gluten-Free Faves

Part of my re-design includes now talking about gluten-free eating options in Japan.  It takes skills and smarts to weed out good places to eat on a GF diet, and I want to share my hard-learned information with others.  Whether you'll be a long-time resident or in for a quick visit, I hope my adventures can help you have an easier, minimally painful stay.  Check out my posts and my new "Gluten-Free Japan" page, where you'll find a map of GF friendly eateries!

This new line of posts is dedicated to current GF faves I find in Japan.  If you're also GF in Japan, or with someone who is, I'm always looking for new places to visit.  Send me info, I'll check it out, and it could make my list!

1. Sushi is a big GF fave of mine.  This photo is from our trip to Rokusen Sushi in Osaka.  They gave me lemon and ginger salt instead of soy sauce.  Pictured is some salmon and fatty salmon sushi.  It was amazing.  The chef really knew what he was doing, the sushi tasted so fresh, and it wasn't very expensive!


2. On our trip to Kobe, we found the Syaarii Bar.  Sandwiches and wraps made of mochi!


Read the labels: most of the sauces aren't GF.  If you ask nicely, they might make you a custom sandwich!

To the left: Matt demonstrates how to put together the mochi sandwich.  To the right: that's a mochi wrap!

3. The Natural Cafe.  Located in Gifu, this is a place we found our first month in town.  It has delicious food, great people who are willing to listen to your questions ad nauseam, and a friendly pet tortoise. 

Iwao-kun
4. Vending machine desserts.  I found I can eat a great mint chocolate chip ice cream bar from a "Seventeen Ice" by Glico.  It's delicious and so natural!  They get the green color through algae and flowers, not dyes!


5. Patisseries and Bakeries that understand the importance of creating food for people with allergies!

Pictured: Koigakubo Bakery in Kobe, where I bought rice bread, GF cookies, and ate GF cheesecake and lemon macaroons (that were like lemon cookie sandwiches).  No web address, but it's on the map.
Also in Kobe: Petit Pas cake shop, a fully GF facility.

6. Really great Mexican.  You can't top Desperado's in Nagoya.  It's run by a Mexican man who speaks fluent Spanish and English, and his Japanese wife, who speaks Japanese and English.

7. Thai, Vietnamese, and Indian restaurants.  I've been to several (all mapped), and they're great.  Not everything will be GF, but the chefs are more willing than most to talk to you, and if they are actually Thai, Vietnamese, or Indian, they will laugh when you ask about wheat in their food.  Because why would they do that?  It just ruins a perfectly good dish.  

Comments

  1. whoa, whoda thunk it - Mexican food in Nagoya?!? I'm going to call and see if they can do something vegan! How awesome that would be! Maybe I'll go this weekend. :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Funnies

As our first year (6 months, really) draws to a close, I think it's important to display the winners of this year's worst (as in best) English sentences. Coming in third place is a very silly dialoge written by some third-years at my school.  Another ALT discovered this and thankfully showed me.  It's obvious what they're trying for but they really miss the mark: A: Hello. B: Hello.  This is H.  May I speak to T please? A: This is T. B: Great!  I'm going to prikura (sic).  Can you come to porice (sic) office at midnight? A: Yes!  Of course!  That sounds fun!  Do you want me to bring anything? B: Sure.  Could you bring some monneys (sic)? A: Yes.  Thank you for inviting me.  I'm so bad!  See you! B: You're welcome.  Fuck you! Second place is two sentences that can be taken as a pair or as stand-alone awesomeness.  These were written by one of my third year students when we had a unit on debates: A: ...

Enter: Germany

We stopped in Munich to visit my good friend Martina who studied abroad in America during high school.  Munich is an unbelievably beautiful and clean city, full of spectacular architecture and interesting places to visit.  The surrounding area is made up of rolling hills dappled with stupendous castles.  Martina and her man Christian were the best hosts ever, taking us all over and dealing with us in their space for almost three weeks! The first main tourist site we visited was Hohenschwangau, home of two castles.  The first we saw was Schloss Neuschwanstein, built by Ludwig II.  It was never really completed, especially inside, as the King went bankrupt during the process.  He was removed from the throne and thrown in prison, where he managed to talk his way out for a solitary walk where he drowned himself.  It's a tale befitting such a sight and such a life.  The castle itself, shown below from an onlooking bridge, is an impressive white ...

A Return to Japan, 2015

Several years ago we had the opportunity to take some good friends of ours, Bo and Liz, to Japan. I'm going to focus on the new things we did and then link to previous blog posts for reference to the things we repeated from our time living in Japan. The trip started out awesome and then kind of fell into a bad place for me and Matt, unfortunately. I chalk it up to our inability to tell Bo and Liz when we wanted to do something different from what they wanted to do, and Matt's desire to be a good guide in the country as he was the only fluent Japanese speaker. He felt a lot of responsibility and then got really tired and very stressed out, which in turn made me very stressed out. I say this not as a rebuke of our friends, who had no way to know how we were feeling since we didn't communicate, but as a gentle suggestion to anyone who travels with friends. Say how you feel and don't be passive aggressive about it. Own up to your limitations and ask for what you need. Your ...