Japan with extreme dietary restrictions?

[Holidayseeker2026]

Celebrating a milestone anniversary in March 2026 and we've always wanted to go to Japan. However, I have a lot of dietary restrictions including gluten, dairy and nuts (ranging from mild allergy to epi pen usage) - as you can imagine it's difficult to dine out so we usually do self-catering in English speaking countries!

Does anyone have any experience of holidaying in Japan in terms of food offerings? Do restaurants mind 1) speaking English (as much as I would love to learn the basics) and 2) understand allergies like we do in the UK. Can I realistically survive for 7-10 days eating in the local restaurants. Tokyo would be where we would spend most time.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Watching with interest! I’m sesame and soy intolerant and wonder how Japan could work for me!

My dgs has so many food intolerances he couldn’t eat anything in my workplace in the uk.
good luck in Japan

My friend did a round Japan small vessel cruise and they were brilliant even the meals taken ashore

I found this page https://www.caa.go.jp/en/policy/food_labeling/ - the first PDF looks useful. It seems that some allergens (including wheat, dairy, and peanuts) have mandatory labelling, while for others it's optional.

The problem is that all of the labelling is in Japanese, and outside of large international hotels you cannot expect anyone to speak English well enough to discuss these issues. So you will need to look very carefully. Basically, avoid noodles. However, there is not too much dairy lurking about in the average Japanese dish.

On the plus side, Japanese people are amazingly willing to oblige, even if you go into a modest "shokudo" place (which can be not much more than a greasy spoon) for a "teishoku" (set meal on a tray). I would suggest that you start with that PDF file (for the official icons, if nothing else) and make up a card that says, in Japanese, "Hi, I am allergic to the following items, please do not serve me anything that contains them". Then show that to the serving staff.

For translation, get the translation app called DeepL, and make sure you have roaming (or local SIM) data. Showing someone on your phone what you want to say is the only realistic way to communicate.

@samarrange thank you! This is really useful.

We went to Japan as two vegetarians about 20 years ago. It was a nightmare. There were a handful of places we could eat. We could speak some Japanese, enough to say that we didn’t eat meat or fish, but we were just met with blank looks. Not that they didn’t understand what we were saying but that they simply didn’t understand the concept.

That said there is very little dairy used. So you should be safe enough on that front. I don’t know about gluten though I’m afraid. Equally no idea about nuts.

Very few people outside the big hotels (or the Apple Store) will speak English.

@MadeOfAllWork thanks for the info. Thankfully I'm alright on the meat and fish. But the lack of English does worry me a bit. Will definitely look into a translation app (as mentioned above) if we do decide to go for it.

In my experiences they don't do great at substitutes so if you want a burger without lettuce (terrible example) - they say no.

Not everyone speaks Japanese so we found it hard to order adapted food, even in places like Disney and bigger tourist places.

I have to admit my diet was pretty terrible for two weeks but I don't go places for the food so it never bothered me. Had the best time and just about to go back!

We rarely ate in a restaurant that spoke any English in Japan, including Tokyo. Tour guides are the only English speakers I came across.
We did eat a lot of sushi /nigiri type foods which would be ok?
I think I would get a translation of what you don't eat made up ready to show restauranteurs.
We loved Japan so I would definitely go if you can!

I'm wondering if it might be a case of finding a big hotel that can cater to my requirements and eating every meal there (happy to skip lunch!)

I’m fairly certain a lot of the restaurants had photo allergens on the menus when I went recently. Depending on how severe your gluten intolerance is then yakitori restaurants maybe fine though there’s a risk of soy - however many let you put that on yourself.

The problem is that all of the labelling is in Japanese, and outside of large international hotels you cannot expect anyone to speak English well enough to discuss these issues. So you will need to look very carefully. Basically, avoid noodles. However, there is not too much dairy lurking about in the average Japanese dish.

But the good news is that you can download a translation app on your phone (or it may already have one - we let tech whizz DS2 be in charge of all this) Just point your phone camera at any writing and like something out of Harry Potter, the words change into English on your screen. We used this for menus and to buy medicine.

We went before translation apps were available, it would be quite different now!

Anaphylaxis UK have some useful information here.

And I think you can get translation cards through them too.

Forgot to say that we found a great Nepalese place in Tokyo, where we had an excellent curry, and the cooks all spoke English even if the waitress didn't. There seem to be several such places.

Also, you can always get a bento box or just a portion of sushi in a convenience store like Lawson or 7/11 at any time and in any town. And to my surprise, wine in a shop is really cheap — you can get a decent bottle of Italian red for £5! So if you're hungry and CBA to struggle with restaurants, a picnic in your room is always a possibility.

I’m gluten intolerant and went to Japan a couple of years ago, speaking no Japanese but armed with a translation card that explained the problem, and a bottle of my own GF soy sauce. Everyone was very helpful indeed. Lots of places rooted out the one random member of staff who spoke English and got them to talk to us to clarify and explain things.

as others have said, I think dairy would be easily avoided, as long as you are happy to default to fish and rice, and I think there aren’t many foods with nuts in there anyway. But sesame would be hard to avoid, if you have problems with that. However, I have never been anywhere where people were more keen to help or took things more seriously, so I think that with some care and some very clear information, you would be ok. And it’s an amazing place to visit!

I don’t eat gluten and ate mainly from places that you could see the food, not restaurants. So food sections if department stores, konbinis etc. I ate a lot if sushi, chirashi bowls, random items (boiled eggs, cooked sweet potato, from konbinis). It is doable.

I would echo previous advice and get it printed out and laminated so you have it on you regardless of phone signal etc

Also make sure you get your translation checked by a native speaker!!! It's so important you don't want a key bit being mistranslated

Will groundnut oil be used in stir fry?

In Tokyo you may not find eating out easy, but you should be able to find places to eat.

Staff in restaurants in Tokyo may have a little English, but expecting to be able to converse with staff in English about allergies is unrealistic. It’s not that they “mind” speaking English, it’s that English fluency is not common.

If you take something printed in Japanese then staff will understand the concept of an allergy. This website has a printable card you can print, fill out and laminate. https://foodallergycardjapan.com/

Hi @Holidayseeker2026

My oldest adult DS is allergic to nuts/peanuts and has OAS with things like raw carrot, and we have been to Japan several times without incident.

The good news is that Japanese food isn’t heavily/at all reliant on nuts/peanuts. Avoiding sesame and other things, however, can be more problematic.

The problem is not that servers won’t want to help, it’s that life-threatening allergies to food are very rare in Japan. It can be hard for people to understand that avoiding certain things is not a preference, (e.g. I’m a vegetarian and I was given things containing bonito ALL the time whilst I was in Japan, which I just accepted to be polite), but a necessity.

Getting allergy cards translated into Japanese from places like Allergy UK will help:

https://www.allergyuk.org/our-services/translation-cards/

If taking epipens and anti-histamines into Japan, you will need a letter from your GP, the original packaging and a copy of prescriptions.

I wouldn’t confine myself to eating in hotels -particularly upmarket ones as they are far more likely to cater to ‘foreign’ tastes and to have nut products in the kitchen.

If you eat fish, then just stick to sushi - it’s often just bits of raw fish and any soy is usually on the side.

Rice is usually gluten free in my experience.

The local supermarkets are excellent- we bought a lot of food in those and also at the train stations. (Japanese train station food is so good, that it’s not uncommon for people to break a journey via a particular station to pick up a local bento box!)

Please ask if you have any questions.

Japan is wonderful, so if you can go, you really should!

@stargirl1701 - groundnut oil isn’t widely used in Japan to the best of my knowledge but my son avoids stir fries to be sure.

@Holidayseeker2026 - btw: If you do go to Japan, you don’t need to restrict yourself to Tokyo. There are loads of places such as Nikko and Kamakura that are easily accessible as day trips via train from Tokyo. These short trips aren’t expensive and are very easy to do by yourself- no special knowledge is required.

You can also reach Kyoto and Kawaguchi-ko, (for Mount Fuji), very easily by train.

Probably grand if you could do self catering.

I just came back from Japan, allergic to shellfish and peanuts and carry epi pen

Not too many restaurants have English speaking staff as most of their tourism is domestic.

It was a bit difficult to be honest and a couple of nights I went for McDonald's because I couldn't be bothered to try and navigate it.

It's best to stick to smaller places, with a more limited menu- I.e we found somewhere which only focused on pork ramen, so I knew it would be ok.

A lot of the hot food items in convenience stores (delicious) have symbols to tell you what's in them, which is really helpful.

Overall, whilst a bit difficult it didn't take away from the trip, and I had one of the best holidays ever. It's a wonderful country.

Good luck