Gluten-Free Udon! (Order Rice Udon Online!)

So you're gluten-free, living in Japan, and you want to eat udon? Well, you're out of luck. Udon is basically gooey strips of wheat. However, you can buy a safe gluten-free udon alternative and eat it while your normal friends eat real udon next to you. It wont help you when you're out at a restaurant, but if you want to vaguely get a sense of what eating udon might sort of be like, order some rice udon and give it a try at home!


うどんは小麦粉で作られる麺ですから、もちろんグルテンがいっぱい入っていますよ。１００％小麦粉のうどんは普通ですね。セリアック病患者およびグルテン不耐症の人は必ず食べません。しかし、１００％米粉うどんもインターネットで注文できるみたい！見た目や味が本物のうどんと違うかも知れないけど、グルテンフリー人にはそれしかないですので、おすすめにしてください。下記のリンクをクリックすると、ウェッブで注文できます。小麦粉うどんも食べる人が米粉うどんを食べてみて、違い点を教えて頂ければ感謝しますよ。もし食べたことがあったら、下にコメントで報告して下さいませんか。

Visit Kobayashiseimen dot JP for your rice udon!

Caveat: the website is in Japanese... But you can get a pretty good idea of what is included in each product just by looking at the pictures. Some of the udon even come with a dipping sauce or broth, all of which are also gluten-free.

Some vocabulary that might be useful on the website:
米粉　　　komeko     rice flour
うどん　　udon         udon
そうめん　soumen     somen (thinner version of udon)
めんつゆ　mentsuyu   noodle sauce
スープ        su-pu         soup

Once you decide on what you want to buy, enlist a Japanese person to help you with the ordering process. 

日本語で注文するのは難しので、外国人の友達に手伝ってあげたら助かると思います！

If you really need me to outline the steps, leave a comment below, and if there's enough demand, I will make a tutorial for it.

Don't know everything you possibly could about udon? Here's a video about udon and gluten! PS: In these videos I am required to explain things while hula hooping... lol

ビデオもありますので、見てみて下さい！よかったら、友達にもシェアーしてね～

Gluten in Barley Tea 麦茶のグルテン

Japan has quite the arsenal of surprise gluten attacks, but perhaps none so ninja-status as mugi cha.

Let's start by setting the scene. Perhaps you are the home of a close Japanese friend. This friend is so close that he or she has listened to your entire explanation of all the gluten-containing food products you must avoid and still graciously consented to have you over for dinner. As is typical of the culture, you are offered some refreshing iced tea while you wait for dinner to be served. You then happily eat your definitively gluten-free meal. Several hours later you are horrified to find that you have been glutened! But how?

The culprit is mugi cha, otherwise known as barley tea.

The Japanese says "the mugi cha is chilled."

Mugi cha, like all herbal "teas," is not made from the true tea plant Camelia sinensis. It is an infusion made from roasted barley, and it seems fairly universally accepted that this tea should and does contain gluten.

日本人へ、ご注意ください。麦茶は大麦由来なので、グルテンが入っています。セリアック病患者およびグルテン不耐症の人には危険です。ほとんどの外国人は麦茶のことが知らないので、この情報をグルテンフリーの友達に教えて下さい。外国人は茶だったら麦と関係ないと思っちゃうし、麦茶のボトルに英語で「Barley」が普通に書いていないので、危ないですね。よろしくお願いします。

Mugi cha is very common in Japan, especially in the summer when iced teas are favored over hot brews. It is not uncommon to find a Brita-esque pitcher of mugi cha in a Japanese refrigerator that is continually refilled and drunk throughout the day in lieu of water.

There is also a real danger of accidentally drinking mugi cha at Japanese restaurants, even if you know not to order it. This is because it may simply spontaneously appear at your table without you saying a word.

In general, Asians restaurants have a practice of serving tea as opposed to a glass of water when you are seated at your table. In my experience, this is usually going to be o-cha (green tea) in Japan, but you definitely cannot rule out mugi cha as a possibility.

Mugi cha is pronounced "moo" (like cows say) "ghee" (like the first part of "geese") "cha" (like cha-cha-cha, the dance). Mugi means "barley" and may be written using the kanji (Chinese character) 麦 or the hiragana (Japanese phonetic characters) むぎ. Cha means "tea" and is virtually always written with the kanji 茶（for your reference, the hiragana would be ちゃ). In short, you should be looking for either 麦茶 or むぎ茶. I really do recommend memorizing those words because you are not going to be able detect mugi cha by sight. It looks exactly like a lightly brewed black oolong or black tea.

The mugi cha is the fourth bottle from the left, directly to the right of a bottle of oolong tea.

You might have noticed in the above photo that although "Jasmine Tea" and "OOLONG CHA" are written in English, the word "barley" is nowhere to be found on the mugi cha bottle. This is not a peculiarity of the brand shown in the photo, but rather a general trend wherein more "foreign" teas like oolong or Jasmine will include the English name on the bottle, but traditional Japanese teas like matcha or mugi cha will not.

Sometimes you might be graced with an obvious warning sign that crosses the language barrier such as a picture of a barley stalk on the bottle, but it really is much more foolproof to memorize or write down the characters for reference. Good luck ~

Consumer Labeling for Gluten in Japan

Gluten-free labeling essentially does not exist in Japan. Once in a blue moon, you may be wandering in a random Tokyo supermarket and happen upon a single package of imported rice pasta that says グルテンフリー (guruten furii, i.e. gluten-free). If you're like me, you will instantly pounce on the package and hold it to the sky like Simba, your eyes tearfully glazing over with joy. The other 364 days of the year, you will not encounter gluten-free labeling in the supermarket. There are a couple Japanese gluten-free activists that have started little personal shops in the far reaches of the city, and that will be the subject of a future post, but personally their existence has so far not impacted my life here very much.

As an aside, I cannot assure you that those rare instances of gluten-free labeling actually mean anything. The FDA has only recently defined American gluten-free labels to be officially <20 ppm and require such testing by law in order to use the label. To my knowledge, there is no such legislation in existence in Japan.

Do they label wheat? Yes and no. Yes, the government encourages food labeling for common allergens/irritants such as wheat, milk, egg, shrimp, and meats. No, it is not as helpful as it sounds. The problem with the system is that almost everything is labeled as containing wheat. This is due to a few key issues (two of these issues are actual problems with the food, the latter two might be better classified as attitude problems):

1. Wheat flour as a thickener is ubiquitous. It does not seem to have occurred to most companies yet to show mercy and just use potato starch, rice flower, etc.
2. Soy sauce, even if only trace amounts, is added to essentially every non-beverage liquid sold (sauces, dressings, etc). I have a theory that instead of adding salt, they add high-sodium soy sauce instead. Consider how much of your food contains salt, and imagine all of that salt contained gluten. That is Japan.
3. Companies are presumably liable if their food contains wheat but is not labeled as such. However, the reverse scenario is different: there is no risk for the company if they use a wheat label despite there actually being no wheat. Thus, there seems to be a trend for some companies, especially chain restaurants, to simply create their allergy list so that it literally has a dot next to wheat in every. single. column. I am not joking. It is easier than actually evaluating each item, contacting manufacturers, etc.
4. Some companies do not distinguish between the "ingredients contain wheat" and the "processed in a facility that also processes wheat" labels. They lump it all under something vague, like just the wheat symbol with a dot next to it. This is frustrating, because I suspect that something like 99% of the facilities here process wheat-containing products. Thus, "this item contains wheat" tends to be written on tons of products that actually probably do not contain wheat or gluten in any detectable amount. Many of us would be willing to risk the facility contamination, but we have no way of knowing if there's actually several grams of wheat flour hidden somewhere in the ingredients list or just the possibility of facility-related trace contamination. This is a really, really important distinction.

Do they label barley or rye? No. I have never, ever seen anything like "product contains barley" on a package. I have never seen these items on a restaurant's allergy listings. I am not sure most Japanese people even know what they are. This might be a good thing because I think it indicates that it is fairly rare in Japan to load up a meal with barley and rye products. I usually only see the symbols for those ingredients in the form of malt additives, alcohols, and vinegars. However, contamination is still a huge issue. For example, some miso soups are for some reason processed with large amounts of barley or wheat. The wheat contamination will be labeled, but the barley contamination will not. I could try to track down the manufacturer every time I drink miso soup, but I have found it simpler to just avoid miso altogether. Avoiding miso and soy sauce in Japan is an insane life, just FYI.

More on all this later! Bye for now ~

Your Shade of Gluten-Free

These are the terms I am inventing for use on this blog. Constructive criticism, comments, questions, opinions etc are all welcome.

Gluten-Free Over 9000

Even the FDA-encouraged gluten-free labels that indicate <20 ppm gluten are not good enough for you. You want even less. If this is you, if you're looking for something like <5 ppm, I think you have to go paleo or something because you will not be able to trust anything that has been processed at all.

Gluten-Free 100 

Everything you eat contains only ingredients that are certified gluten-free according to standard FDA regulations, meaning <20 ppm. 

Gluten-Free 99.9

You are most likely eating Gluten-Free 100, but you cannot prove it definitively because you sometimes buy products that you simply guess are gluten-free, but you don't strictly abide by the official seal. In other words, you do not accept trace contamination as okay, but you acknowledge that it's possible in your diet, although you try to avoid it.

Gluten-Free 99

You accept trace contamination and ambiguous foods. By trace, I do mean trace. For example, sushi rice may be cooked using a malt vinegar, which may contain trace amounts of gluten. You have deemed this an acceptable risk. Often this means that as long as the ingredients do not contain gluten, you are okay if the factory also processes foods that do contain gluten and may be contaminated. You ignore the "processed in a facility that also processes wheat products" labels.

Gluten-Restricted

You avoid obvious overwhelmingly large gluten sources such as bread and pasta, but you ignore the content of dressings and sauces. You ignore "ingredients contain wheat" labels because you don't really look at labels.

Gluten-Swinger

You vaguely like the idea of being Gluten-Restricted, but it does not always work out, and you cannot be said to be on a true Gluten-Free or Gluten-Restricted diet. You are interested in ways of reducing gluten intake, but you are not dependent on them. It is more of a hobby-level interest for you.

FAQ/PAQ - Language

Frequently Asked Questions -- except I say PAQ, for Preemptively Answered Questions, since I am writing this before anyone has a chance to actually ask any questions. I think that's often the case, and more websites should just write PAQ. Well, I digress...

LANGUAGE PAQ

What languages do you speak?
しゃべる言語は？
Short Answer: English >> Japanese >>>...>>> French >>>Latin
Long Answer: English is my first language, as is typically the case for those born and raised in America. I vaguely self-studied Japanese as a child and took a few weekend classes, then started over from Japanese 101 (well, we called it 1A) in college and studied hard-core for 3.5 years, then moved to Japan in July 2012. People here tell me my Japanese rocks, but Japanese people are extremely easily impressed by foreigners speaking their language. In my experience, people begin squealing with delight at "konnichiwa," so I'm not sure how seriously I should be interpreting their praise. I also theoretically learned French in middle and high school. Theoretically. I went to France recently and learned that theoretically doesn't really fly with real French people. Also, for some reason my brain kept trying to speak Japanese, which was met with much surprise and confusion by the French people trying their best to speak English to me. We were also taught Latin in school for six whole years. Needless to say, I have not had much of a chance to practice since then.
英語はネイティブです。子供のころから日本語に興味ありましたが、大学生のころから真面目に勉強し始めました。大学で三年半勉強してから、２０１２年に日本へ引っ越してきました。日本人と会話する時に、「日本語上手」と言う場合が多いですが、まだ「こんにちは」しか言っていない時にも「日本語上手」と言ってくれるので、本当に意味あるかどうかは微妙ですね。これからも勉強して一生懸命頑張ります！昔はフランス語もラテン語も勉強しましたけど、練習ができていないので、ほとんどしゃべれなくなってしまいました。

Is your Japanese text usually a direct translation of your English text?
このブログでは、英語を日本語に直訳していますか？
No.
しない。

Why?
なんで？
Lofty Answers: Because no matter how amazing your translation skills might be (and mine are not really that amazing anyway), a direct translation between Japanese and English is always going to sound bizarre, awkward, and sometimes just plain silly. The languages are structurally (and perhaps culturally) complete opposites. A better strategy seems to be to decide on a topic and then contemplate what I want to say to Japanese people in Japanese separately from what I want to say to English-speakers in English. In addition, there are many things I want to explain to Japanese people about America and about English that would obviously be wasted on other Americans. Similarly, sometimes I will want to tell Americans what it's like to live in Japan -- but then when I write the Japanese, my goal will be to explain what it is like for me, as a foreigner, to live in Japan. The nuance of my intentions are different, and it affects the content.
Not-So-Lofty Answers: I like to ramble and drift a bit in my writing (in English). This is not as much fun in Japanese because I am almost certain it would end up completely incomprehensible. I tend to be much more straight-forward (shorter) in the Japanese simply because it is much easier for me. Also, to be perfectly honest, there are some things I will say in Japanese about America that I don't feel like writing in English and dealing with all the opinions on what I've said. Sometimes I want to start a forum for discussion, but sometimes I just want to state a fact or give my own opinion without becoming troll-bait, which can be very tiring. If you've ever posted anything on the internet ever, I know you can relate.
誰でもなんでも直訳すると、変な文章になります。なぜなら、日本語と英語とでは、文章構造や文法や文化や会話仕方の違いが多すぎて大きすぎるので、仕方がないですね。後は、日本人に言いたいことは、英語で書きたいことと違います。言いたいことが似っているのに、言いたいニュアンスが違う時もあります。たとえば、日本生活をアメリカ人に説明したいけど、外国人の私の日本生活を日本人に説明したいです。やっぱり、言いたいことがちょっと違いますね。あとは、日本語は難しいので、早く疲れちゃいますよ。笑。
Case in point!!!

Does this mean that some of your posts may be in only English or only Japanese?
じゃ、時々英語だけのポストや日本語だけのポストをUPしますか？
Yes, very good.
はい、そうです。

Can I correct your writing?
ブログの文章を修正してあげたらどうですか？
My English? No, thank you lol.
日本語の文章を修正してくれたら感謝しますよ！遠慮なく書いて下さい！

If I am fluent enough in both Japanese and English to read this whole sentence, ブログの翻訳していない文章やポストを翻訳してあげたらどうですか？
Of course, be my guest!

Will you pay me?
Yes, but instead of currency, you will be paid in karma.
And a little translator's credit at the end of the post. :)

My Name

Hello, everyone! My name is Ariella, which is a name of Hebrew origin that literally translates to "Lion God(dess)" or "Lion(ess) of God." When I decided on my Japanese name, I went with Lion God so that I could be called Shishigami (獅子神、ししがみ）. If I went the other way, my name would awkwardly be Kami (god) No ('s) Shishi (lion), and I think it's illegal to have an "of" in the middle of your name. Also, I must admit that I like the way it sounds a bit like Shinigami (Bleach fans, you know what's up).

As an aside, my mom picked the name simply because she liked it -- she's not actually Jewish at all. My dad is technically half-"Jewish" (ancestrally, I don't think you can be religiously half-anything), but his Jewish father gave up his religion and converted to Catholicism for his Italian wife, my grandmother. Thus, my dad is also effectively not Jewish, and neither am I -- only my name is.

皆さん、初めまして、アリエラと申します。

ヘブライ語の名前ですが、アリというのはライオンで、エラというのは神です。日本語の名前を選んだ時に、獅子神（ししがみ）にしました。ヘブライ語なのに、家族はユダヤ人ではありません。ただ、母が好きな名前でした。

アメリカでは、もともとキリスト教やユダヤ教の名前が多いですが、本人の宗教と関係あるわけではありません。日本人が思うより多いかもしれません。たとえば、Mary (Maria, Marianne, Mary-Rose), David (Dave), Michael (Mike), Jacob (Jake), Joseph (Joe) などの名前も聖書からの名前です。ところで、その例は全部私の家族の人々の名前です。

Anyway, I combined my two first names to make my Youtube name: Ariella 獅子神 (Shishigami).

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/washokuhulahoop
(The URL is a long story, but the account name is Ariella Shishigami, I promise.)
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Ariella.Shishigami

When I made my Twitter, interestingly enough, several different permutations of Ariella Shishigami were already taken, so I developed an alternate name, switched and shortened: @ShishiAri. I'm actually quite pleased with it, so thank you to whoever decided to steal all the variations of my full youtube name for their twitter accounts. (That still baffles me... my Hebrew name is incredibly rare, and I completely made up Shishigami, so I assume that's even more rare... Who are these other people?!?)

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ShishiAri
INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/shishiari