The food aspect of this blog has fallen off somewhat in recent weeks - so has the 'blogging' aspect too, actually, but I suppose it's an occupational hazard of moving to the other side of the world (if you're waiting for an email from me, by the way, I'll get there eventually) - but it's something I've been thinking about. Not just because I like to think about food (although I do), but because for the last four weeks, I haven't been vegan.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I went vegan originally because I wasn't happy with the dairy industry and didn't want to support that; I believe in personal responsibility, and I would have felt like a hypocrite if I hadn't acted on what I thought, you know? But that is intensely personal, and I knew I was privileged to have that option, and be able to act upon it and have alternatives available and so on. I'm not gonna go around preaching that everyone should be vegan, cause some people have bigger fish to fry (um, literally?), and I'm pretty resigned to the fact that nearly everything I use capital letters over (feminism! LGBT equality! Harry Potter!) are things that most people don't think too much about. But I've also talked about my personal priorities in the past - that I don't mind eating honey, for instance (I just can't get too upset about bees), or theoretically buying free-range eggs (I say 'theoretically' as I haven't bought or eaten eggs for about a year. But if I were to, I would buy free-range, fancy ones, and this is why). But vegan has felt the most appropriate label for me.

So what's changed? I kind of want to moan, 'it's HARD in Japan!', but I'm sort of opposed to that as an answer. The kanji for 'soy' was one of the first I looked up when I got here, so tracking down soy milk, while trickier than in England, is not impossible. I even found peanut butter in an international food store! (I bought three jars. It had been two weeks since my last fix, and I was getting desperate). There isn't much cheese here - although there's no houmous either, which immediately knocks out one of my major food groups (oh! and how I miss flax eggs!~) - and although almost everything has seafood or fish stock in it, if I were to buy no preprackaged food at all and cook entirely from scratch, I could totally do it.

But the real reason is - and I feel like a bit of a bitch, but this is the truth - that I don't want to do it. I'm in Japan; and although I've never missed dairy, I do kind of love seafood. So yes, I do want to eat kaitenzushi and grilled eel and tuna sashimi. I do want to try all the Japanese snacks in their cute packaging, without decoding said packaging for hours with an internet translating tool. If someone invites me out for tonkatsu, or a karaoke place offers unlimited ice cream as part of the price, or teachers bring omiyage of biscuits and sweets into school - I want to say yes. Being vegan or vegetarian at home has never stopped me doing anything, but here, I think it might. So, selfish as it may be, for now at least I'm gonna put myself first.

But. This does leave me with the question of blogging, and the fact that every recipe on papillon so far is vegan. I know some of you are, I know some of you aren't - so I want your honest opinions; should I post only vegan recipes to this blog? (In all honesty, all my cooking - and the little baking I've done - at home is still vegan for preference; it's only socially that I'm newly omnivorous). If you're vegan, would seafood/dairy content turn you off? And how many times can I say the word vegan in one post? Jeez.

In other news:

• the aforementioned kaitzensushi (conveyor belt sushi). HOLY CRAP YUM. This was so freaking cheap, too! Mostly because I got mine bought for me as I won a bet; but still!
•  stray cats in Nagasaki; they're like the adorable version of pigeons.
•  on the way to Becki's flat at about 5.30am, after some seriously dedicated karaoke. My rendition of 'Popular' from Wicked went down a storm! - I think?