Gluten-free In Kobe, Japan

[glutenkiddies]

I have just recently moved to Kobe, Japan with my dad. It's very hard to look at labels and read the labels to find out if it has wheat or not... especially when it's in Japanese hiragana and kanji. We found out the kanji for wheat, or mugi, but it's hard to tell because sometimes you miss it, and sometimes the label is wrong. One good thing is that all japanese-produced foods are to have labeled on the bottom of the ingredients if the product contains wheat or not. But I'm finding that not even half of them are following this.

Does anybody else live in Japan with a wheat-free diet? Any tips or suggestions to make life easier?

[Merika]

Sorry, no advice, but I have had this same problem with medicines from China - incomplete labeling!!!

Merika

PS. maybe you could talk to a pharmacist there for help and translations?

[olenkae]

Hi there,

just read your post about gluten free products in Japan.

A few months ago I visited Japan briefly and had a similar problem.

Someone from the forum sent me the folllowing emai. I hope it helps you too.

Cheers,

Aleks

***

Alex-

I would be happy to help you. Here is the official website for Narita Airport. You can look for the terminal you will be in to find a good restaurant.

Open Original Shared Link

I have never had an international layover there so I'm not sure how it will work, but I hope you have access to the main shopping and dining area- it's quite nice and there are a lot of options (although less for us gluten free people).

When I've been at the airport preparing for a flight back, I've either gone for Japanese or one time, for a (Very disappointing) stop at this yuppie soup restaurant, where you can get plain rice and sesame seeds. I would go for Japanese, especially if you like sashimi (raw fish)... You could order Chirashi zushi, which I talked about in my blurb, or some kind of donburi. (rice bowl) There are several kinds of donburi, and I don't think they contain much, if any soy sauce. But, you could ask. Being the airport, everyone should speak english. There is generally oya-don, or chicken and egg over rice bowl, gyu-don, sauteed beef strips with onions over rice bowl. This should be available in the food court- there's a nice one with a variety of restaurants, both western and Japanese, but I can't remember which terminal it is in... anyway, it's a kind of homey, hearty japanese meal. If it comes with any soup, you may wish to avoid it as an unknown, but you may be served green tea with it. Just remember, no beer. Sake is ok though... not that I'm recommending it before a long flight! Otherwise you can go to a little fancier Japanese restaurant with sushi set meals, and order some sushi set that appeals to you- just remember, the salad dressing probably contains soy sauce, and in an ideal world, you would bring your own gluten free soy sauce or eat it plain. If the miso looks white and cloudy, it's probably ok (being Tokyo), but if it is more red or brown and cloudy, it is made from barley. I seem to remember avoiding the miso when I was there. The weird little pickled things (tsukurimono) are probably gluten free, though they may be a matter of taste- some of them have rather unfortunate flavors. Oddly enough the tastiest kind, little green wrinkled disks, made from cucumber, may have small amounts of soy sauce in them. The daikon (white chunks) or other veggies are less likely to.

Other types of food- I don't eat meat, but you could try a steak platter or something. Kobe beef, anyone? There's also "Cafe" style places that will have a rice pilaf option, i sometimes go for the EBI PIRAFU (shrimp pilaf) though it may contain tiny amounts of soy sauce... it will have less than actual Japanese style Chinese food fried rice (CHAHAN). Chinese places- FOGETABOWTIT, everything will have soy sauce. Italian- unless you're very lucky and they have risotto, not likely to work out. This is Japan, too, so the rice would be sushi rice and not arborio. Not too likely at the airport anyway. Mexican food- unlikely, and if they did it would probably have only flour tortillas- VERY HARD to get corn tortillas in Japan, and if you do they'll be deep fried. Korean- I don't know if they have any at the airport, but Bibbinba (Japanese for the korean name) is a rice bowl with assorted lightly flavored sesame veggies and meats with a spicy kimchi sauce and kimchi in it- VERY good, generally gluten free- although the thick spicy sauce you add youself or is added as a glop MAY contain wheat, you may wish to say you don't like spicy and ask them not to add it. I like ISHIYAKI (heated stone pot) Bibbinba, cause the rice gets all crispy and tasty, and they often add a (raw) egg which you stir in and let get cooked by the stone pot. MMmmmm...

If you want to grab a snack, if you have access to a CONBINI (convenience store) type place, they may have refrigerated shelves with ONIGIRI (rice balls). Onigiri is generally safe BUT the nori wrapper may have been flavored with a bit of soy sauce before being used, so it's up to you. I suppose you could remove the wrapper before eating it, but that seems quite sad and potentially messy. I always read the labels, and Japanese law requires the listing of allergens at the end, including wheat, but since it won't be in English, that may not help you. My favorite is the tsuna onigiri, which is like tuna fish salad wrapped in a rice triangle and covered with rice. I think it tends to be in a blue wrapper and the TSU in TSUNA looks kind of like a sideways smiley face. Although it might be tempting, avoid any brownish colored circles of rice without wrappers- they are probably fried rice balls and contain soy sauce flavoring. And if anything in it looks like it was fried and battered, throw it out, obviously. There are a wide range of flavors. In general the flavors without nori that aren't fried rice flavor taste like grandma's mountain kitchen, and not in a good way. Other snacks that are ok- chocolates, especially plain MEIJI chocolate, are fine. Also, you can buy potato chips, but stick with the plain flavors- plain old salt, and even though you can't read it, stick with the kind with a short ingredient list. Look on the back of one that seems to have a really fancy flavor and one that looks plain, and you may be able to determine where the ingredient list is. It will have things in (parenthesis). Plain nuts are probably ok, and maybe even the dried squid or other fish snacks, but they smell very strongly and it's hard to find any that actually taste good. You can also get giant corn-nuts which are pretty tasty.

For coffee, there's Dotours, the local coffee shop, or Starbucks. Not to be a Seattle snob, but the quality of the coffee at Starbucks is far superior, in my opinion, esp. the espresso since it doesn't come premixed out of a machine. Nonetheless, dotours might have some cute and novel flavored lattes for the season, so feel free. Alternatively you could try a green tea (maccha) frappacino at Starbucks. Until very recently this flavor was only available in Japan during Summer. Oops, it may not be around this time of year, but you can check.

If you want a really traditional snack, a lot of the mochi (chewy rice treats) doesn't have wheat in it. (In a gift type box kinda like chocolates, but usually with an open display box so you can see what it looks like) In general, if it's crunchy, you can't have it- it's either senbei (rice (or wheat) crackers, but flavored with soy sauce) or little cookie things (wheat). I like a kind of mochi that looks like little soft uncooked dough sheets from the Kyoto/ Nara area- especially the Sakura (cherry blossom) jam flavor. However, you'd really want to check the label before eating it, so I wouldn't recommend before an international flight. You could take it to go, and check later though. They do have a technical expiration date of a few weeks or so, so you'd want to make sure you eat it or give it to someone before the stamped date. (You can see it somewhere on the package- look for month and date, not sure if they'd use the Japanese year system or the western one, but it would be clear numbers, probably stamped in black ink).

Hmm, this turned into quite an email. Hope it's helpful and that you have a nice stopover.

-Seamaiden

I have just recently moved to Kobe, Japan with my dad. It's very hard to look at labels and read the labels to find out if it has wheat or not... especially when it's in Japanese hiragana and kanji. We found out the kanji for wheat, or mugi, but it's hard to tell because sometimes you miss it, and sometimes the label is wrong. One good thing is that all japanese-produced foods are to have labeled on the bottom of the ingredients if the product contains wheat or not. But I'm finding that not even half of them are following this.

Does anybody else live in Japan with a wheat-free diet? Any tips or suggestions to make life easier?