Pictograms help foreigners place orders at restaurants in Japan

Kanji’s, made easy.

This link shows all 14 images, which include beef, cowmilk, alcohol, and crab.

https://www.foodpict.com/

The pictures are pretty straightforward and easy, but I was a bit confused with the egg, buckwheat and shellfish.

Having said that, what japan is doing with its menus is far more foreign friendly than almost any country does. Menus that come with pictures and a detailed description are a great help for those who can't read. So hats off to the restaurant establishment in that sense.

Simple but clever innovation. I hope the idea goes nationwide.

Good on Japan for thinking about this.

This is a positive step to help foreigners, but it is still quite a basic step. The expensive restaurants with fine Japanese cuisine have menus written in a calligraphy styled kanji that many Japanese cannot read and, of course, no pictures. Foreigners want to experience the real Japanese cuisine, but up until now, they are limited to family restaurants and chain izakayas with picture menus. These icons might help a little, but it doesn't actually describe anything. It just shows one or two ingredients.

Furthermore, those using English translated menus must have them proof read by an English speaker. I remember DomaDoma had a 'Flesh Salad' heading plastered across the salad page in their expensive picture menu. Another one that springs to mind is my local Thai restaurant has 'Crap Salad' on their menu (Crab Salad).

@Disilusioned - these pictograms are for showing allergens and other foods which people avoid for specific reasons, so it's not a guider for dining tourists per se.

If they added honey to the list, that would be grand.

It would be nice if all food manufacturers and restaurants listed ingredients used in their products/meals. It happens in other countries. There is one food item I can't eat as it triggers migraines, not as serious as an allergy that could kill me, but enough to have me off work for a couple of days.

The pictograms are nice and hardly require the language below them (except for wheat and buckwheat). The words are nice and hardly require the pictograms. Both are nice if a bit of an overkill, except for people who want to learn the kanji-hanji-English-Korean for different food items.

@Luddite

...not as serious as an allergy that could kill me, but enough to have me off work for a couple of days.

I feel your pain. Gin, eh? ; )

I remember DomaDoma had a 'Flesh Salad' heading plastered across the salad page in their expensive picture menu. Another one that springs to mind is my local Thai restaurant has 'Crap Salad' on their menu (Crab Salad).

Haha!! Here's a good one for you- I remember my brother going to a fast food restaurant when we lived in Alexandria Egypt and looking at a menu that read:

Spicy Iraqi Sausages with Herpes

(They meant herbs) Had a good laugh at that one.

@Maria - these pictograms are for showing allergens and other foods which people avoid for specific reasons, 

Please read this statement from the article Maria!

for restaurant operators to describe the ingredients of their dishes to foreign tourists

I can't imagine why anyone would be mocking a guide designed to improve comprehension in a basic, easy to understand fashion.

Not all gaijin here have the same language skills.

Great idea, so long as they strictly enforce ways of avoiding contact between utensils and tools used to cook foods have these potential allergens in them and their surfaces they are cooked on with those they do not, and so far I have seen little to nothing to show me this is the case. For example, if they are flipping okonomiyaki most shops won't use separate spatulas to flip an okonomiyaki for which the customer has requested no meat. They'll use the same ones to flip all of them. What's more, do these shops also list the ingredients in sauces and condiments and what not? They may well spell out what they put into products, but not what's in the sauces they put in. Go to any supermarket and look at the back of "vegetable soup consommé", and if you read carefully and know you're Japanese you'll see most contain pork, shrimp, and even beef extract. Do they fry in non-beef fat?

I guess what I'm saying is while this is a good effort, the food industry as a whole needs a lesson on proper prep., and they need to do a better job also listing products that are in goods sold in supermarkets, that might be used in the cooking as well. The former could also help in avoiding all the mass food poisonings we hear about, though that's another story.

Disillusioned: "for restaurant operators to describe the ingredients of their dishes to foreign tourists"

I know you're quoting the article for Maria, but that is just NOT going to happen outside of very high class places where the chef him or herself comes out to speak with customers. A lot of restaurants, and in particular chain shops, are staffed with part-timers, often students, who are just going to go all deer-in-headlights if a foreign customer goes off script and asks what's in something instead of just pointing. Hell, I remember once when I first came here when I asked what "以上" meant when they were trying to ask me if that's all I wanted, and the staff started crying because I didn't just say yes or nod. Another time I asked if there was MSG in the food, the staff couldn't understand and went to get the manager (who spoke some English), who eventually pointed to the Ajinomoto on the table and said, "You can use this", completely misunderstanding my question. Haha.

It's come a long way since way back then, and this is a further step in the right direction, but I still doubt very much staff will be able to explain what's in a product in response to off-script questions.

I feel your pain. Gin, eh? ; )

Fortunately, no.

I wonder what a UK version of this would look like for the Japanese visitors ?

I can just imagine a Billy Connolly sketch as the waiter...

The labelling rules in the UK are so precise that picturegrams would cover the walls of resataurants like hieroglyphs in a pyramid.