Going to Japan with food allergies / intolerances

As someone who has various food intolerances such as dairy, soya, etc., I found this great resource for those travelling to Japan from justhungry.com which has printable Letter/A4 sheets of cards explaining food intolerances/allergies - really useful and I am going to be printing out a couple of sheets to bring along:

http://justhungry.com/japan-dining-out-cards



Some food contents have to be labelled in Japan, see http://www.survivingnjapan.com/2012/07/allergy-friendly-food-in-japan.html but soya isn't one of them - but it is useful if you are allergic or intolerant to any of these:



Since soy sauce often contains wheat at least you can avoid that in food, although soy/soya may still be present. BTW I found this great soy sauce alternative: https://www.coconutsecret.com/aminos2.html

 

If you're buying something in the store or supermarket, the ingredients tend to be in a landscape rectangular box on the packaging of a lot of products. Google Translate does a good job of translating this in their latest app: simply snap a picture and let it do its magic.

I've been surprised by how many simple loafs of bread contain both milk and soya...