Vegan Tokyo: six tastings with no fish dashi anywhere

Eating vegan in Japan is hard, but not for lack of vegetables. The difficulty is that bonito dashi sits inside almost every broth, inside blended soy sauce, inside the most innocent-looking dish of boiled greens. Ask "does this have meat in it" and the restaurant will honestly say no — and the bowl is still made with fish.

The six stops on this route have been checked at KITCHEN level, not menu level. It opens with a mushroom-broth ramen — the bowl that proves removing the fish doesn't mean removing the depth, that this isn't a thin version of the real thing. Then a tofu shop making it the same morning, three styles side by side so you can taste how far fresh tofu is from the supermarket block. Tempura from a dedicated fryer, not the oil that has been cooking prawns — the kind of detail you only learn by asking the kitchen. After that, a shojin temple-style rice set in tasting portion.

It closes with red-bean dessert and soy ice cream. You leave with a list of safe places across Tokyo plus the Japanese phrases written out, so you can keep going on your own — worth more than the three hours themselves, because it lasts the whole trip. English-speaking guide, groups of 2–8.