Japanese eat more meat these days because their eating habits have become more westernized. Some western people dislike meat dishes these days because some of them do not like to kill animals and some others want to save energy. Animal breeding needs a lot of feed which takes a lot of energy to grow.
Here a nice restaurant which serves vegan dishes in Awajishima, named Hello Kitty Showbox Theater. You can enjoy beautiful and tasty dishes at this restaurant with a lot of vegetables. Soy beans are used for the protein source based on dietetics.
According to the guidelines by the Japanese Ministry of Health, we need to take in 350g of vegetables per day. The reason is, vegetables consist of dietary fiberswhich are good for our health. Dietary fibers are chemically made up of poly saccharides. These poly saccharides are digested in our body to shorter polysaccharides. From these saccharides molecules of shorter alkyl chains with 2 to 4 carbons like acetic acids, lactic acids and propionic acids are produced which play important roles to feed intestinal bacteria. Materials excreted from these bacteria like some vitamins and other biologically active materials play important roles for our potential immunological activity and neuronal activity.