It looks good, it tastes like nothing one earth

[venta]

Here is a useful thing I just came across. At least, it is useful if you are planning to go to Japan and are not omnivorous:

Cut-out-and-keep cards explaining various dietary restrictions, in Japanese

I think these are a great idea, particularly for countries in which your average foreign person is all at sea with the language. It occurs to me that I haven't bought a phrasebook in a long time - maybe these days they have a handy set of stock phrases for common allergies/intolerances/choices?

Comments

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

The cards are pretty good, but it would be nice if they made the distinction between fish and veggie dashi.

I also used to find "I can't eat X" (even for religious reasons) seemed to work better than "I don't eat X"

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you read the comments, but someone commented about the distinction between fish and veggie dashi. Maki's answer was:

The reasoning here is that most of the time, especially at restaurants, dashi is made with some kind of dried fish. That is the norm. If by chance the establishment you are at makes their dashi from vegetable ingredients only (which would be unusual) they should be able to tell you that once you've said you can't have dashi.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Me!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Um... yes!

I considered that, but ruled it out because that comment was signed 'Mike' and your name is 'Ian'.

I went and checked on your LJ profile that your name was 'Ian' and everything.

And came back to comment... and, er, well. Sometimes, for some reason, I glance at an icon or mis-read a name and have quite long conversations with someone on LJ until it turns out that actually they are someone quite different to who I thought.

Anyway, it turns out that you appear to be fractalgeek and not in fact ringbark. I don't know how that happened, because your names and icons are pretty different...

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

There is a reply pending moderation. I've found going "is your dashi fish" to be a really bad question, and came to the conclusion it was because it was like going "do you use cheap ingredients?" Saying "I don't eat dashi", as per the current list) looks and sounds stupid.

Hence my request to change the phrasing to "I don't eat meat, fish (including dashi made from fish)"...