I’ve wanted to start a gluten free blog for a long time, but it took three challenging—and delicious—months in Japan to finally make it happen. I was diagnosed with celiac disease right at the start of college, so every trip I’ve taken as an adult has come with the added challenge of navigating the world with celiac disease. Over the years, I’ve been a broke celiac, a strict celiac, a vegan celiac, and a foodie celiac—and now, I’m excited to add “blogging celiac” to that list!

Spending three months in Japan was a huge challenge, but it gave me confidence in my ability to feed myself safely and healthily in a country that often seemed determined to make eating gluten free difficult. I spent countless hours researching—scouring Google Maps, obscure gluten free blogs, Facebook groups, Reddit posts, and more—before booking my flight. Still, that preparation wasn’t enough.

I quickly realized how unique every celiac’s travel and food preferences are. We all manage celiac disease differently, and when I arrived in Tokyo, I saw that much of the advice I’d read didn’t fit my style of travel or eating. The same is probably true for you! My hope is that you’ll find useful tips in my posts but also feel empowered to create your own path on your Japan trip. There’s incredible food across the country, but in my experience, finding it means stepping off the well-worn gluten free path.

A lot of the gluten free restaurants I’d highlighted in my research phase with hundreds of glowing reviews from other celiacs ended up being pretty mediocre if not outright awful. I do believe that a lot of those reviewers genuinely enjoyed those meals and I love that for them, but I also think celiacs in general are so grateful to find safe options that we will leave a five star review on just about anything.

Naturally, this makes navigating positive reviews a little more challenging because a five star review can mean anything from ‘best meal of my life’ to ‘I didn’t have a gluten reaction.’ For celiacs, obviously health comes first but we should be able to expect more from our restaurants than just that! The Japanese are wonderfully (and sometimes shockingly) critical in their restaurant reviews and I’m going to try to take a leaf out of their book and be both happy when I don’t get sick but also honest about the quality of the meal beyond that.

Unfortunately, I only realized I was going to need to finally make a gluten free blog about six weeks into my trip so I have very little photo documentation from the earlier section of it and if I’d known I was going to attempt to start a side project as a food photographer, I would have brought a mini light and tripod or something like that so please don’t expect professional quality photos for any of my reviews! I have a day job that I don’t want to quit and a refurbished iPhone 13; this is just a way for me to share what I learned so future celiacs in Japan can have fewer hungry nights than me.

I have no idea how this little gluten free blog project will go so thank you for reading if you’ve stumbled across this somehow! I’ll be back soon with more posts, restaurant reviews, a ranking of Japanese destinations based on how awesome they are for celiacs and even some advice for planning a gluten free ski vacation!

xo,
Lydia