The World Vegan Travel Podcast
The World Vegan Travel Podcast
Japan Vegan Travel Food Guide | How Ume Helps Vegans in Osaka | Masaki
Update: Since recording this episode, Masaki has pivoted Ume from restaurant listings to sharing Japanese vegan recipes on Instagram.
In today’s episode, we’ll be talking to Masaki, the founder of Ume, a pioneering food discovery platform helping vegan and vegetarian travelers in Japan.
She’ll be sharing her personal journey from becoming vegetarian to creating Ume, and why it’s so important to have accurate, reliable information when navigating Japan’s unique food culture. We’ll also dive into some of the challenges plant-based travelers face in Japan, how supermarkets and convenience stores can be hidden gems, and the meticulous process Ume uses to verify vegan-friendly restaurants.
By the end of this episode, you’ll come away with practical tips for eating vegan in Japan, a deeper understanding of Japanese food culture, and an inside look at how Ume is reshaping the travel experience for plant-based visitors.
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[00:00:00] Hello Masaki. Welcome to The World Vegan Travel Podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much for inviting me, Brighde.
I am really pleased to have you on the podcast because we are doing a topic that we have never done before. A very specific kind of topic for a very specific kind of traveler. And I'm thrilled for you to talk more about what we are going to be going into. But before we get into all of that, would you mind telling us what it is that you do in like the vegan space?
Sure. I'm really excited for this recording session too. I am Masaki. I am the founder of Ume, which is a vegan and vegetarian food finding platform website in Japan.
Fantastic.
Tell me please,why you decided to build Ume.
I love this question. So I became a vegetarian four years ago. Every time I go and find food, it was not the easiest experience. I moved to [00:01:00] Australia for Ume, and every time I went back I realized, 'Oh my gosh, Japan is so hard compared to Australia.' But then I never thought of solving the problem or anything by myself because people were telling me, 'Oh, it's your choice. You're going to suffer the consequence.' And I'm like, 'Okay, you know what? It's fine.' Now that I'm here, I've got more friends who are eating plant-based diets. And two of my really close friends, they were going to Japan, and they're vegan. And so they reached out to me, and they were like, 'Masaki, can you like help us find vegan food because it's kind of hard. We're going to this rural area, and we'll be moving around, and we can't really decide where to go because it's for work trip.' So I was like, 'Okay, you know what, leave it to me. I can find it for you. I understand Japanese, I can read, it's going to be much easier for me to find food.' So I took on the task. But then that's when I remembered, 'Oh my gosh.' It was so hard and I kind of gave up. But it was the moment when I realized, this is not just a problem for me, but it's a problem that all my close friends that I love are experiencing [00:02:00] and a lot more people are experiencing too. That was the moment when I thought I really want to solve this problem, and knowing how hard it can be as a Japanese in Japan, my friends are going there for fun and work, and it might be their one time experience in, maybe, 10 years. And I just didn't want any of that stressful or hustling, like disappointment. I wanted them to have an absolutely fun time. And yeah, just to save other people from going through the same experience.
Wow. So how far are you in the process of this project? Is it fully launched? Ready to go? Or are you still building it? How is the platform. Is it like user contributed or are you going out there, or do you have a team of people going out there and finding items? What can a user expect?
So we are only covering restaurants, bars, bakeries and dessert shops. And no supermarkets or vans where they sell sandwiches, maybe, once in a month or they [00:03:00] come and go. We are not covering any of that because it's hard to keep them on track, and make sure the information's up to date. But where are we at with our stage? We launched Osaka last month, and we literally updated the new website yesterday. So I was working until 2:00 AM getting it out. We're going to launch Tokyo next month, and so it's exciting. It's a really simple website at the moment, but it's still quite good for whatever that's out there. I would still use mine over a lot of things. Maybe I'm a little bit biased because I made it, but yes,we're going to be adding more features very soon, but yes, we just started, and are we getting the data, and whether it's user contributed. We are going to open the door for user contribution soon. We're literally building that feature, but at the moment we wanted to make sure it's accurate. So my Japan officer, Amy, she called 300 restaurants in Osaka. And of all of that we listed 200. And you might wonder what happened to the [00:04:00] hundred. Those were either closed already or we got the data from Happy Cow because they've got great data. But the issue is that they can be outdated. And I had many instances where I stumble across like closed restaurants, and it's maybe fine if you're living in Japan, but if you're there for three days, which I've interviewed my friends, they travel all the way, and they kind of lost half a day for that. Yeah, we called all of them. And then, Amy found out that some of them are closed. Some of them stopped offering vegetarian or vegan menus. One of the stories Amy shared was really interesting because she said the shop staff mentioned that they never had a vegan menu. And it's because they had a big staff change, so they had it two years ago, but not anymore. Yeah. So all of that, we updated it. Some of the restaurants, because of the number of tourists, they're getting a little bit overwhelmed and they're like, 'Oh, we don't really want to be catering for a lot of like special dietaries because we have to tell the kitchen and make sure we get you the right things.' So we can't do that for the moment. We're not listing all of that [00:05:00] because not just that we want people to be able to find food that's delicious, but we want people to have the best experience. So we don't want our users to get negativebehavior from the staff.
So we are only listing the ones that we are comfortable with, and that was 200 for Osaka, and Amy called a thousand plus, for Tokyo, which is coming up next month.
She called a thousand plus?
Yeah, she's calling more. So it's all up to date and it's going to be really good. Yeah, it's all manually verified, and we're going to keep this up to date.
My goodness. So how is the user experience different to Happy Cow, may I ask?
Oh, I love this question. Firstly, I need to say that I love Happy Cow, and I use Happy Cow. So how we really different from them, firstly, is that, with this simplistic stage we're still building, so we're going to get there and you'll see the full version. But at this stage, we have the most accurate data across all of the listings. If someone visits Happy Cow today, and say, 'Oh, well, they're not offering vegan menus anymore.' Maybe that listing, specifically, will be more [00:06:00] up to date than us. We manually verified all of the listings and made sure they have a vegan menu. And one of the issues with user listings, is like the customer or like the user asks the restaurants. And at that time, maybe, the person who answered was part-time staff, and they think it's vegan, but it has bonito and they don't know that fish is not vegan. But we had that conversation with restaurants, all of them. It's like, oh yeah, like when you say vegan there, there's our fish or meat in it. We did that for all of the restaurants. So the accuracy and the freshness of the data, I think is the difference. And, because I have a lot of friends who are on a diet where they're vegetarians, but they can't eat food with pungents in it, which is like garlic, onion, leek. And there's no platform that caters for them at the moment. So we've got vegan, vegetarian clearly labeled, and vegan option, vegetarian option, and vegetarian options without five pungents.
Wow. And I'm thinking [00:07:00] that this kind of app, this kind of website, would actually be really helpful for people with like dairy allergies andsea life allergies as well, because this is something that I feel is very hard to navigate in Japan, the ingredients.
So if I understand well, like labeling requirements are a little bit different in Japan than Australia, for example. And as a result ingredients could include like these allergens, like seafood in the dish, and it's just not even labeled in there. And this can be life threatening for people with those kinds of allergies. So I'm that those people would really appreciate having this kind of accurate data as well. Can you tell me, Masaki, what are your plans, your future plans for Ume?
Sure. So we will be launching Tokyo next month and we'll be covering Japan. And at [00:08:00] this moment, as I mentioned, we are like the most up to date, and vegetarian and vegan food finding platform in Japan with a new filter option for people who can't like have five pungents. But we don't want to be just like a platform to help people save stress. We want the entire experience to be fun. So we want to obviously keep the information really fresh and up to date all the time, which we need some innovative thinking. We need to build a system that helps us do that. We're currently working on that, as well as just really improving the user experience. We're going to be expanding to other dietary requirements like gluten-free,allergies, peanut butter, different things.
I love it. I love it. A suggestion for you. You can take it or ignore it if you want to, but when we were putting our vegan tours together in Japan, something that was very challenging for us was, like how big the restaurants were. Sometimes they're very, very small [00:09:00] and sometimes they don't take reservations. That was another one that we struggled with as well. So you know, you might like to include that in your database or at some point in the future.
I love that. Thank you. That's really interesting. Definitely, another problem to solve.
Yes, for sure. And I'd love it if you could define for our travelers what a konbini is if they don't already know. Because really, this is such a great option for travelers to Japan, especially if they're going to more rural areas where there just might not be any at all. Can you define what a konbini is, and like the cultural significance of konbinis?
Sure. So konbini is a Japanese way of saying konbini store, which is convenience store. It's 24 7. You can always go and find a really easy food. Back then, it was more like processed food, like, you know, bread already made like lunches and different things, but [00:10:00] now they're selling vegetables, fruits, eggs and different things. So it's getting much more convenient. It's like a little supermarket. Yeah.
And, they really are very popular. Like people go to Japan just to try the konbini items, which blows my mind, but they do.
It's really great. But I think kombinis are great if you don't have too much like dietary requirements. And yes, you can go and still have fun, but you can have more fun in Japanese supermarkets. And you might be like, 'Oh, it's just a supermarket.' You've going to find so many different vegetables, fruits, different food that you can't find anywhere else. So I highly recommend, and I'll talk about this more.
Okay, let's hear it. What is it that makes Japanese supermarkets so different to ones in Australia where you are right now, or Canada?
Okay. The reason why I'm pushing for supermarkets, I think a lot of people, especially people who book your tours, they want to experience the culture, and the history, and the trend, and the lifestyle. [00:11:00] And I really think supermarkets reflect that. If you go to supermarkets in America, everything's big. Everything is super convenient or something like that. Japan, if you look at the time that the supermarket opens, it's really different per prefecture. The lifestyle of the people and the shopping behavior is different, and the way they display the items is also different. And according to where you are in Japan or even within the same prefecture, you can see certain sections are longer than the other, and by this I mean, if they're really famous for tofu, they have an entire aisle of just tofu or maybe entire aisle, just natto. And so you can see a lot of like things just by looking into it. Even the packaging, it can tell you what's trending. You can see on the top, like maybe pop idols in Japan or maybe some of the supermarkets are going for more sustainable, so there's like less packaging and different things. So from the cultural aspect, I think it's really interesting and fascinating. At the same time, if you're more into environment and nature, I would [00:12:00] still recommend going to the supermarket. And I have a good reason, because if you can see , the vegetables and the fruit areas, and Japan doesn't do a lot of importing. Well, I mean, yes we do, but most of the vegetables and the fruits are still locally sourced. So you can immediately see what kind of soil type, and water, and the climate Japan has to be able to produce those vegetables and fruits. That's really interesting because I study agricultural science. You can tell what kind of land Japan is, and from food, you can kind of decipher the nature and the culture behind it.
Oh, that is really interesting.
So what are some of the things that we should look for in supermarkets?
I would say, the greens in Japan is like something else. It's like
Oh.
nothing that I've had in other countries, and I especially recommend spinach. It's very sweet. Every single time I go back to Japan, I'm really mind blown? How can these vegetables be sweet? And I don't mean it's like sugary sweet. It has that vegetable [00:13:00] starch in it, which is really sweet and a strong flavor. And especially if you're going in winter, vegetables can get sweeter. During winter vegetables convert the starch that they make from photosynthesis into sugar.
And then that really lowers the freezing point so the plant doesn't freeze and die. So that makes the vegetables sweeter.
And so they have such high quality vegetables. So yes, greens, I would recommend spinach. Japan also has a lot of really interesting mushrooms, and if you're going to supermarkets, you can buy them for like a dollar for different ones. My favorite is maitake. I can't find them here. It has this like woody flavor, that only maitake has, no other mushroom has. So I would recommend
Oh.
you to try, but if you just want to try things like really quickly, I don't want to cook or anything. Tofu's great. They've got sesame flavored tofu, umami flavored tofu, different types of tofu.
Oh.
Yeah. All of these tofus, you can open it and eat it directly. You don't have to cook it. [00:14:00] Like the hygiene standards are really high. So there's a lot of recipes in Japan where people just open up tofu and put some sauce in it. That's it. All of them, again, less than $2. So it's really great. Natto's also amazing.
Could you explain natto because I think most people don't really know what it is. It's rather an acquired taste, but definitely something worth trying in Japan. Yeah, so natto is a fermented bean dish in Japan. Some people say it smells like someone else's feet. To me, I grew up eating it, so like I love it, and it's something that I always miss from Japan. I would definitely recommend you to try it. It's like an interesting part of, I guess, our food culture, and it's really accessible. You can find it in any supermarket, I can guarantee. And you can find it vegan in any place.
The
trick is, don't use the sauce. The sauce has bonito in it. If you just remove that, use mustard, put soy sauce or some broth powder of your own choice, mushroom or kombu, like seaweed, [00:15:00] then you can have natto in the way that restaurants prepares it.
Yes, I quite like natto. I wouldn't say it's my absolute favorite, but I don't dislike it. And I will definitely always try it a couple of times when I'm in Japan.
Oh.
But the thing that makes it very interesting, it's got this kind of like stretch between the beans, which, if you are really don't like texture, it could weird you out a little bit. Like it's a little bit of a funny thing, but you should still just try it. And I believe it's a very popular dish at breakfast time. Right?
Oh, wow. Yes. As you mentioned, it's really slimy, and That's the word.
And if you don't like eating okra, then I don't think you should try it because it's like probably a hundred times slimier, but yes, it's really popular for breakfast because it's really healthy. There's even like natto snack or airfried natto, different natto. The microbe that they have inside, it's really great for gut health, so people like having it every single day. And it's a great source of [00:16:00] protein too.
Yeah. Yeah, It is really good. And you can mix it up, like you said, with all sorts of condiments and then with rice and eat with your chopsticks. So delicious. And before I interrupted you to know more about natto, you started talking about pickles. I know pickles are so popular throughout Japan. They take pickles very seriously. More seriously than any country I've ever been to.
Really.
I think. Oh wow. Yes. So just like Japan has a tofu aisle and natto aisle, they have a pickle aisle. Probably half of them are vegan and half of them are not. They are different ones, which is made of radish, Chinese radish,some of them, umeboshi, where our company name is from Ume, which is pickled plum. It's a savory thing, so you should have it with rice if you can. You can find rice in supermarkets very easily. It's packaged, and all you have to do is just microwave it and you can have it with natto as we mentioned, or pickled [00:17:00] radish, all sorts of different ones. Some of them are shiso flavored,
things that you can try. And it's all in small portions. So every day, even if you're not staying, or like you're cooking, you're in a hotel, you can just grab this rice in whatever, like tsukemono, which is the Japanese term for pickled radish. You can try a little bit of taste every single day.
Yeah. Yeah. Shiso is a type of leaf, right?
Yes.
I don't know what the English word is, but I know it when I see it.
It has a really fragrant smell. Yeah.
I've often had it like tempered as well.
Yes. As you are talking, I'm just thinking to myself, this really would be so easy to just make a quick meal even in your hotel room. You could whip something up, even in like a very rural area.
So this is such a great strategy for eating well, like culturally interesting foods, anywhere in Japan. [00:18:00] It's a bit of a game changer. I'm not surprised you wanted to talk about this topic.
Absolutely. So there was a moment where I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I can cook.' And I'm going to be honest, I'm not a best chef, and I think this is why I want to share this to tourists because all of these ways of cooking that I'm going to share, is very easy and you can do it anywhere. Like even in a hotel room or like in a simple Airbnb.
Right.
If you're going to supermarkets, you can eat everything. That's all of your options.
I love it. I love it. So what else can people experience? You mentioned onigiri.
Yes. Okay. I think this is super interesting. One of my favorite onigiri type is kombu, which is seaweed marinated with soy sauce and sugar, and that was my favorite growing up. But once I became vegan, it usually has bonito, so you can't eat it. And
in the kombini, they only have the one with bonito. But
if you go
into the supermarket, they usually have a vegan one. So you can grab that [00:19:00] and grab the microwaveable rice, and you can have the kombu onigiri. Which you can't usually find in an onigiri restaurant with vegan options because they usually don't make it.
So this leads me to my next question because now we're starting to talk about things that are a mixture of different ingredients, and not like a 100% whole food, which means that you have to check the ingredients. Do you have any tips or tricks on how people can make sure there isn't any bonito flakes
lurking in the onigiri?
Yeah, sure. All of the fresh food that I mentioned, those are safe, obviously because it's like vegetables. But if you're getting natto, tofu, or pickle radish, just make sure you check the labeling behind and especially just watch out for bonito. And all you do is just going to Google translate and just look for that bonito word. Usually they don't put anything else because like pickles and chickens, I think like Japanese people will freak out. That doesn't go together. So all you're just scanning, is for seafood. Yeah. But [00:20:00] other than that, I think you're pretty safe. Yeah.
Fantastic. And for listeners who don't know, can you explain what on onigiri are?
Yeah, sure. So onigiri are rice bowls in Japan, and if you're on Instagram and like scrolling on reels, I'm pretty sure you've been seeing a lot of delicious looking onigiris. It's really easy. If you can't find it, just any supermarket, you can make anything. And that's how me, as Japanese growing up, eating actual onigiri in Japan, I'm recommending it. So this is legit.
Yes. Yes. I think a lot of the time, like when you go to a convenience store, you can see onigiri. Maybe they're vegan, maybe they're not, but they're like wrapped up in nori seaweed, and they're wrapped up in a way that the seaweed isn't touching the rice. And you have to open up the packaging in a particular way so that then when you are ready to eat it, the seaweed will be surrounding the onigiri which [00:21:00] keeps the nori like crispy, right?
Yes. And Japan is all about food, flavor, umami and the texture and everything, excellence. So yeah, everyone's specific about this, like the seaweed not getting soggy. They want that specific like packaging too. And it's a really fun experience opening it. And you can try that with sandwiches too.
Yes. Yeah. If your social media algorithm is showing you like Japanese food, you just get to see this incredibly creative ways of presenting or the way these are packaged. It's really cool. Tell us about something a little bit more sweet.
Yes. Mochi is viral right now, and I love mochi, and I'm sure a lot of people like mochi. Japan supermarkets has a mochi section, and they are mostly vegan. Mochi with red beans, mochi with yomogi red beans. Yomogi is a type of herb. It has this scent that goes really well with red beans. The combination's perfect. They've got sesame, [00:22:00] they've got sweet soy sauce. It's a bit more on the sweet side. All of that is vegan, usually, unless you're going into a special place where they are like random things, but I can almost guarantee 95%, they're all vegan, so just make sure you check the back for the labeling. But all of these vegan. You can try this very easily. You don't need to cook. You just grab mochi and you eat it. And in terms of fruits, I would recommend
peach
and strawberries.
Ooh.
I never had anything better than Japanese peaches and strawberries so far. So I highly recommend.
Yes. And mochi, they're like made out of pulverized cooked rice, right? I love it. They're very like sticky and chewy, but dense and stretchy. It's a very unique, unique, texture, but I love it. And there's lots of [00:23:00] different kinds of mochis around in Japan for sure. I think even in certain prefectures they have different ones. They have different ways of preparing too. Like Ohagi is also good. Yeah, like some of the mochi, they've got the wrapping outside. Some of them, they put it inside, they put different herbs in different regions.
It's really amazing.
Yes. On our vegan tours, in Kanazawa, we prepare some mochi the traditional way with the big
Oh.
pestle and mortar, with the big hammer.
And it's pretty intensive to make mochi the traditional way. And then once it's prepared then it was dipped in the roasted soybean flour or the sesame seeds or a couple of others. I can't remember, but it is so good.
That sounds good.
Okay. Well ,what about noodles because I love me some good 'noods'.
Noodles, I don't know if you heard about udon, but udon is like a [00:24:00] Japanese noodle, and when they prepare it, they press the dough really hard. Some of the restaurants like cover it with a sheet and they step on it just to make sure it's like extra hard. So there's
a lot of
time prepared in it to make that bouncy, stretchy, smooth texture. Buckwheat noodles, soba, is an option for those who are gluten free, and you can find all of that in the noodle section, which are in the refrigerator area, or even the dry area. So this is a recommendation for you if you are renting an Airbnb. So you can grab these noodles, get some soy sauce, get some broth powder, kombu or mushroom and find all of the vegetables that I've just mentioned. Like greens, spinach, different mushrooms, add tofu in it. There you go. You have a perfect udon, likevegan or vegetarian udon.
Are there any kind of condiments that people might seek out to make these dishes more flavorful?
I would say, soy [00:25:00] sauce is definitely it. Going for a classic one, it might be hard for you to figure out. So if you're only there for like short time and you don't want to go into the condiment section and be overwhelmed by a lot of different ones. I like going through all of them. I might even recommend you to pack your little soy sauce because what makes a Japanese dish? I think the key part is soy sauce, sugar, salt, and
some ginger. So yeah, like whether you like to pack your soy sauce or not, soy sauce and ginger can really flavor out that udon. And make sure you put broth of your own choice, which to some people like, they think, oh, if you're just cooking vegetables, why would you add broth in it? But Japan traditionally has this really heavy culture and we put an emphasis on broth. So back in the days people started eating meat after the Western influence.
But back then people used to get a lot of like dashi, like stock from kombu seaweed, or bonito. So we are like, I guess traditionally, historically, cooking a lot of [00:26:00] food with broth. So if you're making any udon and you want it to taste like the ones from outside, then make sure, add some broth in it.
Something that was really surprising for me. I went to a vegan ramen cooking class a couple of years ago, and I didn't realize that sesame seed paste was such a popular ingredient in Japanese cooking. It's like quite a bit darker than Middle Eastern tahini, from what I know. But it really does do a good job at making something very umami flavored. Would you agree?
I would agree. And if you want to go more for the sesame seed flavor, my favorite way to eat it is, mix some sesame seed, add some peanut butter and add miso in it. Miso's also really great.
And they have this really amazing umami to really bring out that sesame seed. But yes, sesame seed is a huge one. It smells really great.
Yes. Yes. I'm sure there's a few different [00:27:00] supermarket chains in Japan. Would you recommend one over the other? Are there any that are particularly good with labeling that might make it easier to navigate the aisles or not particularly.
Japan's getting better and better. I'm getting surprised every single time I go back. If you absolutely want to find something that's made for vegan people,you know, vegan patties or something, if you want more like protein, that's like processed, then go for big ones like Aeon. They have a lot of options.
But again, Japan, depending on the prefecture, they have different supermarkets. So all of the things that I've shared with you, greens, fruits, mochi, tofu, natto, you can find it in any supermarkets. Love it. Okay.
So Masaki, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was really so lovely to talk to you and honestly, the tips that you have shared are a little bit of a game changer. Of course, it would be amazing if we had incredible [00:28:00] vegan options and vegan restaurants in every single Japanese town, city, or village. But I think what you've shared today really helps change our mindset on like, an opening up our mind to the idea that maybe we can go and do that little several multi-day hike, or maybe we can go to that village even though there aren't any vegan restaurants there. So thank you so much. Before we say goodbye, would you mind sharing again what the URL is for Ume, and how people can follow you on social media?
Sure. Thanks so much for having me, Brighde. We have an Instagram account, and it's called Ume Japan Osaka, and we're sharing updates of our progress and everything, but, right now it's an onigiri account, so you can see different recipes that we're making and you can make it in your house even prior to going to Japan and just to hype yourself up and be ready. And our DMs are always open. And feel [00:29:00] free to email us if you like. You can find our website in our Instagram link. So yeah, if you type in Ume Japan Osaka, you'll find us there.
Fabulous.
Our website is
U-M-E-B-O-S-H-I.co.
Fabulous. Thank you so much, Masaki. Thank you so much.
You very much.