JJapan Trips

Tokyo vegetables

  • December 19, 2025

I’d like to poop at least once during our week in Tokyo and I’m not sure a 711 green smoothie once a day will do it. Does anyone have recommendations for restaurants with vegetables: salads, roasted veggies, anything really?

by Key-Fix-679

49 comments

  2. My personal go to is the big three Gyudon restaurants: Matsuya, Sukiya, Yoshinoya cuz they’re everywhere. They’re affordable and have veggies on the menu. I always get a salad along with my set

  3. The problem is that tourists tend to eat meals that are often meat-heavy, and often also fatty and oily. Japanese people do, of course, eat that kind of food, but they are usually not eating it every single day.

    Plenty of restaurants serve dishes that include vegetables. Sometimes, the dish will concentrate on a particular vegetable, such as nasu (eggplant), and at other times it might be a soup, stew or hotpot that contains a variety of vegetables. Or, of course, it might be a salad, including seaweed salad.

    Another way of getting vegetables is to head to a supermarket or to the “depachika” (basement food hall) of a department store. Both supermarkets and depachika have a selection of pre-prepared meals, including vegetable dishes and salads, and the selection is both much better, and better quality, than konbini (convenience stores).

  4. We remedied this by booking accommodations with a kitchen. Or at least 1 stove.
    Saved up on the expenses as well, by hitting the supermarket at least every other day for some groceries.

  8. I brought nestle dark roast instant coffee mix with me, a nice hot cup in the mornings kept me regular , I noticed the coffee in Japan isn’t as strong as it is here in America so I always bring my own to make in the mornings every hotel I’ve stayed at had an electric kettle

  9. Fiber drinks help, my kid and I really like Fibe-Mini (easy conbini purchase).

    Personally I have to really front load veggies each day. Frozen broccoli is usually microwaveable and it’s normal for me to eat two small bags with hot sauce (grocery store purchases).

    Similarly I am very fond of cucumbers for fiber. I like mine chopped & drizzled with sesame oil and furikake.

    Assuming you don’t travel with cutting board & knife, swing by Daiso – you might buy something worth keeping!

  11. I remain puzzled by this. Breakfast sets come with salads! Veggies exist everywhere. A plate of tempura is 60-80% veggie! There are salads in supermarkets and conbini. Veggies exist all over the place.

    My digestive system goes on strike when I fly and and I still manage to poop in Japan. (I don’t know if it is altitude or airline food, but it applies to flights everywhere).

  12. Get natto for breakfast. This is why I only ate like 3 times konbini food on my first 11-day visit. My breakfast is always those set meals with vegetable, fish, egg and natto. Good for bowel movement. And try to buy fruits from the supermarket. I bought a pack and I always eat 1 piece apple/orange at night in the hotel room.

    You can do this.

  14. Check out a grocery store. I usually get some easy to eat things like the Japanese cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and bananas. The cucumbers are easy enough to be bitten into whole without being sliced up. These are all fairly inexpensive, and not the fancy fruit people seem to think are the entirety of fruits in Japan

  15. Sweet potatoes, they’re everywhere right now!
    I also always get the vegetable option for curry, eat a lot of veggies for shabu-shabu, there’s almost always a vegetable option on a menu even if it’s an appetizer.

  16. I have a rule in my everyday life that I always need a vegetable in every meal, and while I very occasionally broke it on my trip, I didn’t find it hard to follow this in Japan. When getting a don, I made sure it had something like kimchi or mushrooms and onions included. At an izakaya ordering small plates, I always added a veggie dish – cucumber, asparagus, etc. At a curry place, I’d get one with cabbage and add on an extra veggie topping. You’ve just got to be intentional about it.

    I also like to have a bit of fruit every night – I was less consistent with this, but prepackaged pineapple at a konbini made this easy. Lots more options if you go to a grocery store.

  17. Isn’t coffee, or most items containing large amounts of caffeine (ex sodas) a diuretic, and therefore would make it easier to poop?

  18. Check the Happy Cow app/site for vegan/vegetarian restaurants and other places that have those options.

  19. Head over to [National Azabu](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oAZY3KMyzQJmDhMM9?g_st=ic) in Hiroo and get some chia seeds! They’re packed with fiber (about 10g per 3 tablespoons)

    Mix them into yogurt (easily found at the konbini) or water and let them soak for about 10 minutes before consuming. Definitely helped a ton to do this daily while I was in Tokyo.

  20. 7 Eleven is your friend. Get a cup size broccoli, with eggs and a few chicken chunks, and an extra cabbage salad for breakfast.

  21. I had no poopoo issues in Vietnam but 48 hours in Japan and my shit was… well, off. Primarily because in relation it was dairy, butter, oil heavy. I went from *pho* to *coco curry*. Here’s what helped me:

    * probiotic drinks
    * 7/11 kim chi
    * always looking for a vegetable dish at a restaurant, for something that isn’t cabbage as an add-on
    * fiber pills/fiber drinks

    I became “normal” again for the rest of the week.

  23. You can’t go wrong with Korean food too! I felt so sick by day 2 d/t constipation so I stopped by a Korean restaurant in my last ditch effort to get large portions of vegetables. Needless to say it did the job!

  24. In a hotel without a kitchen I really liked buying a bagged salad or coleslaw mix, adding dressing and shaking right in the bag, then eating out of the bag with a fork. It works!

  25. I used to get edamame at the Kombini, sometimes shelled, sometimes unshelled, an occasional salad, and sliced cucumber. I was also all about that Coca Cola plus, lol. It definitely didn’t clean me out like others claim but it did help maintain balance.

  28. One of my favorite things to do is buy various foods {persimmon in fall and white peach in spring} that are so good and fresh in supermarkets. Also great salads, veg sushi like futo maki, dishes like nishime and other supermarket prepared foods. (not combini)

  29. I usually just book breakfast at the hotel. Eat some veggies that are offered there. Drink some juice and it will get the bowels moving.

  32. The 7/11 green smoothies actually help a lot. You could plan ahead and bring some travel sized green powders you can just chug each morning without having to always stop at a konbini

    The smoothies are delicious, though.

  33. Start now with taking some fiber supplements (Psyllium Husk) and continue when you are in Japan. Yogurt and Fiber drinks also exist but I didn’t have any major problems

  34. Spicy Thai food. Husband and I ordered from Som Tum Der. It was actually pretty good for Thai food in Tokyo.

  35. Half a cap of miralax every day during the trip, starting a few days before you leave. Very gentle. It’s not just the diet, it’s the time change and change in habits. Very common when traveling like that.

  36. I brought a bag of ground chia seeds with me. I put a tablespoon into a bottle of iced green tea every morning. After breakfast, I would shake the bottle and drink a quarter of the bottle at a time into it was empty. The fiber in the seeds helped a lot.

  37. Look for some Hokkaido style curry spots like Suage. Usually has a variety of veggies in the bowl. Also some 7-11 might have prepackaged salad kits. It’s what I try to get daily

  38. Not to be rude, but I don’t understand how this is such a problem for many. We went for 3 weeks and had lots of fruits and veggies. Cabbage, tomatoes, sweet potato, broccoli, cucumber, edamame, eggplant, lotus root, spinach (sooo many places have steamed spinach sides), small salads. Oranges, grapes, apples. We aren’t vegetarian either, we just enjoy eating a variety of foods. Vegetables and vegetable sides were very common at izakayas, tempura, yakinuku, and hot pot places. We also pretty much only ate Japanese food (with the exception of one pizza that admittedly offered no fiber).

    The only fiber-rich foods that we normally have but didn’t easily have access to in Japan were oats, nuts, and chia seeds. Still, we both pooped fine. I am just curious how much your diet really differs in your home country vs. Japan. Are you filling most of the meals with meat, rice, and noodles?

  40. Konbinis have salads ready to eat salads. The first time i went i had this basil, octopus and broccoli salad at Lawsons and it was probably one of the best things i’ve eaten. However, i don’t know why or what happened but lawsons doesn’t sell that salad anymore and 7 eleven makes the exact same salad.

    7-11 also has the zero-sugar orange cider soda drink with fibre in it. I literally drank 1 or 2 of these a day
    and i was flowing good. There’s also a yellow lemon cider soda drink but it’s for vitamin c and sickness.

  41. Definitely eat vegetables, but i also recommend grabbing a coke + every day.

    It’s sweetened with fiber.

  42. I was sincerely worried about this since I get these type of digestive issues from stress, over exercise or travel; three things I would do a lot of in my trip 😂

    My creative solution was to

    a) make sure I picked salad options wherever I could (and there are plenty! I rarely went without) and

    b) I brought a bag of prunes with me. I believe restrictions may vary by country on this, but I made sure it was allowed between the US and Japan. I could’ve totally bought a bag from a grocery store, but I wanted something with me from day 0 when I started traveling. Best hack in my arsenal, I had no issues at all during my 17 days there, nor did I worry! Two pieces per day kept me a-ok 👌🏼

  43. In my non travel diet I do not eat a lot of noodles or rice. I think the shift to eating more carbohydrates in Japan will be the issue.

    Also bananas and sweet potatoes won’t help you poop 😆🙈

  45. I see this come up all the time and am baffled by it.

    Our most recent trip was for 5 weeks this autumn and neither of us had any problems with constipation at all.

    The Japanese eat plenty of vegetables, so just make sure you seek those kinds of dishes out rather than steak or tonkatsu or tonkotsu ramen or sushi all the time.

    Fruit is a bit more expensive than in some countries but still readily available to buy if you want to get more fibres between meals.

    But I really don’t know what people are eating to get quite so blocked up when they’re holidaying in Japan!

  48. Echoing fibe minis, but also mini yogurts that helped me on my last trip. I also looked at the boxed smoothie drinks they had at the konbinis. A quick Google translate would put me to the ones with the highest fiber content. I’ve found that the ones with veggie illustrations don’t always have a high enough fiber amount, so take a few mins to compare.

    I always have bowel issues on vacations abroad so I totally understand your stress.

  49. Had no issue with that during my 2 weeks. A lot of restaurants have daikon and/or cabbage as an ingredient or side dish.

    I have to amit that i rarely drink alcohol. This May have helped me.

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