A Word from the Director

Hello!

When I got to know the lifestyle of a vegetarian, I was a freshman in the university. The student from the Netherlands told me “more people are becoming vegetarian in consideration of the environmental issues.” I remember that it was hard for me to associate vegetarianism with environmental issues at that time.

Due to the loss of my beloved dog that I had spent for 12 years with when I was 20, I started thinking of the dogs and cats that are killed in the pet industry. In that process, I came not wish for the other species of animals who suffered and had their lives taken away for my meals.

As I did more and more research, I found that the vegetarian and vegan lifestyles were the better choice not only for the animals, but also for the environment and food security.

Even though I chose to study at the agricultural department at Kyoto University based on my interest in environmental issues, I felt that adopting the vegetarian lifestyle was what I could do for the earth sooner and easier than the high level lectures or some big projects that require a lot of time and money.

So, I became vegetarian first, and step by step, vegan as well. At that time in Japan, I was the rare vegetarian, but while I was doing an internship as a graduate student in Belgium, I sometimes met vegetarian people, and there were always vegetarian options since the lifestyle was socially recognized.

In my last year at the graduate school after my return to Japan, I started the project of introducing vegan options to the university’s cafeteria. And this is how VegeProject started. While this project required much patience and effort, we succeeded in introducing vegan menus thanks to all the support from many people. The vegan menus were of course appreciated by vegetarians and vegans but we also saw many other people choose and enjoyed the vegan menus.

That was the time I realized “a change can be made.”

After that experience, and even graduation, I continued VegeProject’s activities while working for a company as an employee, but on the day we had an interview with Paul McCartney, I decided “I’ll want to do this to my fullest too”, and VegeProject became an official NPO (non-profit organization) the following year.

I believe that even though it’s hard to change your customs all of a sudden, the world will be a better place if more people adopt the vegan and vegetarian lifestyles even sometimes, if we have a society where those who want to try vegetarianism and veganism can easily make that choice.

Vegetarianism and veganism is also garnering attention from a business perspective in Japan as well.

Would you like to join our project?