Vegetarian Japanese food

Ok so I'm trying this vegetarian thing (mostly just for kicks, I'm playing around with my food options because I'm learning so much from this site!) and I'm going to a Japanese restaurant with my fam this weekend.  I know fish technically isn't meat and since I did just start this I may have some but anyone know of Veggie-Japanese food? If you know the sodium content too, that would be great--trying to lower that.

How is fish not meat?  Last time I checked, it's still animal flesh and vegetarians don't eat it.  Pescetarians do, though.

Anyway, don't get anything tempura.  That means battered and deep-fried.  Get a tofu dish.  I love anything with tofu and some kind of veggies.  Tofu & string beans in garlic sauce is excellent and a little spicy usually, but if you're super concerned about calories you should watch it with the sauce.  And get brown rice instead of white and only eat a small portion of the rice.  Get miso soup to start to help fill you up.  Sushi's also not too bad and some places have some excellent vegetarian rolls.

haha ok so maybe i was raised catholic and we can eat fish during lent. i've always considered it meat as well

There are some great vegetarian sushi rolls (tofu, cucumber, avocado), there is also a great Oshinko (pickled) appetizer that I love, you can do Miso soup, seaweed salad and maybe a tofu teriaki (sp?)

okay, usually you can get edamame, vegetable with udon noodles (yasai udon), grilled eggplant (nasu), and definitely some tofu dishes. there's a deep-fried tofu dish with sauce (agedashidofu) and a chilled tofu with soy sauce (hiyayako). you also have teppanyaki where you can get stir fried veggies with fried rice or noodles. for salads you can have seaweed salad or cucumber salad (sunomono). and as the above posters said, you can get plenty of vegetarian sushi such as egg sushi (tamago) and this sweet-ish tofu sushi (inari), which is a personal favourite of mine. hope it helped.

you could get cha soba as a staple. it's just noodles and seaweed though, so you'll probably get some side dishes. subwaybusker gave some really great suggestions above (:

avacodo roll made with brown rice if you can yum!

Subwaybusker pretty much covered it ... I would just add a few things:

-yasai gyoza (veg dumplings - ask for them steamed)

The seaweed salad is called hiziki. Also, the deep fried tofu dish with sauce (age dashi tofu) usually has bonito flakes on top, which is fish.

I love Inari sushi (sweet tofu) too...  

I enjoy just about any kind of roll. The place I typical frequent has cucumber rolls, carrot, avacado, and even crazy things like peanut (not too bad) and pickled beat!

In addition, California rolls are made with imitation crab - which is just soy - so it's not even fish. Yummy when they're fried in tempura, but you probably want to avoid that. ^_~ (In addition, I know they have like imitation crab sticks... but I've never had that.)

Tempura is my favorite, though, and you can get just about any veggie fried in it.

Also, vegetable ramen is a consideration.

My sister is a vegan. She always does well at a Japanese restaurant. They are typically very easy to work with if you tell them you don't eat meat.

imitation crab IS NOT soy- it is a bunch of fish products... kind of like the seafood version of bologna

OMG! I am so sorry! I was told imitation crab was soy! I don't eat fish so it might be possible that someone was trying to trick me into eating it... but I really thought a bit more highly of that person than that.

Now I am thoroughly disgusted.

Yeah, the fake crab is called surimi, and usually made out of bottom fish such as pollock and hake.

My favorite Japanese veg foods are the rolls made with cucumber or daikon radish (think this is called oshinko), miso soup, udon, tempura carrots, and edamame.

Yeah, I definitely looked it up online. I think I'd rather just eat regular fish than that junk! Ugh. ;_;

I am totally bummed. But, on the positive side, at least that means I won't be eating any tempura'd California rolls.... =)

OMG, this made me hungry!  I love the seaweed salad, miso, brown rice, veggie rolls, udon, and age dofu (no fish flakes, please)! 

Have fun, and enjoy!  :)

Btw, to all vegetarians/vegans, miso soup stock is made with bonito flakes most of the time, as are most of the soup stocks for all the noodle dishes and many of the dips. This includes most veggies stewed in a stock. Bonito is pretty much salt #2 in Japan. Even the sweet rolled omelette (used in nigiri) is often made with a stock containing bonito :/  I love Japanese food, so when it comes to those items I usually just make my own^^

good point appelsap!  We've got a place that does the miso without the flakes and does "vegetarian" noodles in veggie broth made from daikon, carrots, onions, and ginger.  YUM!  :)