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Hi everyone,

I travelled in Japan last autumn - apologies for only getting around to
putting together this summary now.

Japan was a wonderful country to visit with amazing temples, gardens and a
wealth of culture to explore.  The people are amazingly polite and eager to
please (so much so that I felt guilty at times when shopping if I asked for
something that they couldn't provide).  I brought a stock of little Celtic
badges and pins to give as gifts to thank people who were helpful, but then
they would feel embarassed if they couldn't recriprocate!

However, I did find that being sure of staying GF in Japan was very
difficult mainly due to the language difficulties (most people speak very
little English and you can't even read the language because it's in a
different script) and the fact that many main dishes contain soy sauce.

My difficulties were compounded by the fact that I am vegetarian so my
options are even more limited than most.  Many Japanese restaurants
specialise in one type of cuisine and there are some wonderful strict
vegetarian restaurants based on the Buddhist tradition especially in Kyoto,
but I would not subject my meat-eating husband to that type of food every
night for 3 weeks!

I brought my own stock of GF bread. snacks, soy sauce, some tinned and dried
supplies and found I needed them more than in any other country I've ever
travelled in.

I brought a restaurant card type translation (which was written by one
Japanase person and checked by another) but, even though they and I put a
lot of effort into getting it to read appropriately, it must have been too
detailed or obscure because anyone I showed it to pored over it for ages but
still seemed to find it hard to understand my requirements - even in an
organic type place where I thought they would be more used to special diets.
I gave up on it after a few times as it seemed more trouble than it was
worth.  Instead I tried to communicate by saying "no mugi"(the general word
for many gluten-containing grains), "no soy sauce" etc. and crossing my
fingers (anti-vampire-style) to indicate the "no" part. I would also point
to the relevant characters.

For shopping and eating out, I had printed out some basic relevant words and
characters so that I could check labels on yogurt, ice-cream etc. and once I
found a brand/flavour that I thought was safe I tended to stick to it.  I
got very fond of certain flavours of Hazen-daz!

Breakfast was no problem as there was always eggs and rice, for lunch we
tended to buy things in a convenience store and picnic and for dinner I just
tried to stick to dishes I was reasonably sure were safe (one of best
options being shabu-shabu where you cook your own food in a broth and add
the sauces yourself).  I also ate plain salads and omelettes and obvious GF
options in Western restaurants sometimes.

I didn't get sick but I'm not super-sensitive and not as super-careful as
some others on the List and I have to admit that to avoid living on plain
rice and the few vegetarian sushi options, I ended up either taking risks or
eating my own
food supplemented with obvious GF choices like fruit, hard-boiled eggs etc.

One big plus food-wise was finding the most wonderful rice cakes - 100 times
better than the cardboard Western variety - I ate them a lot when my GF
bread stocks ran out.  Also loved the small cakes made with moshi (rice
dough) and sometimes stuffed with bean paste - I think these were GF though
as with most things it was hard to be 100% sure.

Hope this will be helpful to anyone planning a trip to Japan.

Best GF wishes,
Liz Ward, Dublin, Ireland

* Visit the Celiac Web Page at www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/index.html *