

It’s probably out of scope for you, but what always ticks me off a bit with these rankings is that they usually mostly care about restaurants. I think that’s only half the story.
To give an example, HappyCow rates Tokyo the fifth most vegan friendly city in the world basically because it’s huge and in a metropolitan area with 40 million people there’s going to be a few vegan restaurants. But I lived in Tokyo for a bit, and normal shopping is a completely different story. There is no uniform labelling, you can’t even count on allergens, or on listed ingredients (lots of hidden fish, the bone char sugar problem, etc.). Also, vegan food is mostly seen as a part of the health food niche anyway so there aren’t many meat alternatives products, and labels aren’t seen as important. So if you’re not eating all your meals at restaurants I wouldn’t say it’s particularly vegan friendly.
In comparison the tiny city in Germany where I currently live has zero vegan restaurants. But literally any supermarket has a decent selection of products clearly labelled as vegan, not just alternatives (although they have a ton of those too) but just normal products. There literally are Japanese brands that sell clearly labelled vegan versions of some of their products here that are not vegan in Japan. In terms of actually living here as a vegan, it’s significantly easier than in Tokyo. And tbh the next city that has vegan restaurants is maybe half an hour by train and that’s actually not too different from what I used to travel within Tokyo to get to restaurants.












We have this in Germany too. Traditionally, the area where I live hates the area where I was born. These two places are maybe an hour apart and in the same state. All because they were governed by different nobles ages ago who had different ideas about Christianity. Tbh though it was much more of a thing in my parents’ generation.