Muslim Dietary Card for Japan: Show This to Restaurant Staff (2026)

Ordering food in Japan is easy until you need to ask what is in it. Most staff outside the big tourist areas do not speak English, and the words that matter most to a Muslim traveller — lard, cooking sake, mirin, pork extract in the stock — are exactly the ones that get lost.

This page is a card you can show. Open it on your phone at the counter and hand the phone over, or print it. Everything the staff needs to read is written in plain Japanese below.

The card — show this to the staff

ムスリム（イスラム教徒）のお客様からのお願い

宗教上の理由で、下記の食材を食べることができません。
お手数ですが、使われているかどうか教えてください。

食べられないもの

• 豚肉、および豚由来のもの
  ラード・ゼラチン・豚エキス・ベーコン・ハム・ソーセージ・とんこつ
• お酒・アルコール
  料理酒・みりん・ワイン・ビール・ブランデー・洋酒入りの菓子
• イスラム法に従って処理されていない肉
  牛・鶏も、処理方法が分からない場合は食べられません

お聞きしたいこと

• この料理に豚肉・お酒（料理酒・みりん）は使われていますか？
• 豚肉とお酒を使わずに作れる料理はありますか？
• スープや出汁、ソースに豚のエキスは入っていますか？

魚・野菜・卵・乳製品は食べられます。
ご確認いただけると、安心して食事ができます。ありがとうございます。

How to use it

• Show it before you order, not after. Once a dish is cooked, the kitchen cannot take the mirin back out.
• Hand over the phone rather than reading it out. The staff can take their time, and they can carry it to the kitchen to ask the chef.
• Screenshot this page so it works without a signal — station basements and older buildings often have none.
• If you want a paper copy, use your browser's print function on this page.

Three phrases worth learning

What the card cannot cover

Two things come up often enough to mention. Mirin is a sweet cooking wine that appears in sauces, glazes and simmered dishes where you would not expect alcohol at all — teriyaki, nikujaga, most tsuyu. Some products labelled mirin-fu chomiryo contain under 1% alcohol and many travellers accept them; that is a decision for you and the standard you follow. Dashi, the stock underneath a great deal of Japanese cooking, is usually fish and kelp, but pork-based stock is common in ramen and some Chinese-Japanese dishes.

Asking is still worth it even where the answer is uncertain. Staff who cannot promise anything will usually tell you which dishes they would avoid.

What this card is and is not

This card states what you cannot eat. It does not make a restaurant halal, and a kitchen that agrees to leave out pork and alcohol is not a certified one. Shared fryers, shared grills and shared utensils are normal in Japanese kitchens. If you need certified food rather than pork-free and alcohol-free food, look for a venue that names its certifying body.

You can search certified and Muslim-friendly venues across Japan on Halal Navi, where the halal status of each venue is recorded with the source it came from.

Published: 6 August 2026 ・ Last verified: 6 August 2026
Written by: Aisha Rahman, Halal Navi editorial team

Disclosure: Halal Navi receives no payment from any restaurant or hotel in exchange for inclusion, and all recommendations reflect independent editorial judgment based on Muslim-friendly criteria. Some articles contain affiliate booking links (e.g. Trip.com); if you book through one, Halal Navi may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.