A fish is not a plant.

If you wish to be a truly international type fellow, 

then one thing that's important to remember is that 

many people have strict dietary requirements. 

I will be writing more posts about this topic in the future, 

but first up let's start with the most common type 

of special diet "VEGETARIAN". 

Although I've noticed that it's not incredibly popular in Japan, 

many people around the world are vegetarian for a variety 

of reasons, some of which include but are not limited to: 

Health, allergies, religion & environmentalism. 

There are a lot of different kinds of vegetarian,

 but we are going to take a look at a baseline example first. 

A vegetarian eats no meat (flesh of a living creature) 

most of the time this includes seafood 

(believe it or not a fish is still a living creature, not a plant). 

If you are going to be cooking for a group of foreign friends 

or taking some tourists to a restaurant 

(so you don't take them to yaki-niku) 

it's a good idea to ask if anyone is vegetarian. 

Or as a general rule, always prepare at least one 

dish that contains no meat, as there are some 

people that may not be vegetarians, 

but don't eat particular kinds of meat.