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Vegetarian Options In Japan

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Japanese mainly follow Shintoism and Buddhism. Though I have  asked few people questions about these religions, not everybody knows about the rituals, traditions the Gods etc.  The reason for this might be either they were hesitant to talk about these topics or their knowledge in this topic was hazy. For e.g. when I asked some guys what was there inside the shrines, very few had some idea about it. So even the Buddhists here are not vegetarians, they believe Buddha ate meat (from wiki   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine  ) and this might be one of the reasons  non-existence of vegetarians in Japan. I recall some of my colleagues telling me that the monks in the shrines are vegetarians and you will get vegetarian food at some shrines. Finding Vegetarian food in Japan might be really difficult, sometimes it becomes difficult to even explain the concept of vegetarians to a Japanese. The Japanese word for vegetarian is   saishoku- shugisha ( 菜食主義者)   but this does no