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What is vegetarian?

This time, I want to try to write an article in English.
One reason is that there are some friends who wants to read my blog but can't read Japanese, and I think this topic become more interesting if I can get opinion from different nationalities.
Japanese readers, please don't close nor browser back just because this is written in English.
Please continue trying to read for a while. You will understand this article is written in easy word immediately (because I don't know difficult word).
Still you feel you don't get what I mean or not interesting, you can leave this page.
I think my English writing ability is not enough to express what I think, but I'd like to try. Please let me know there are anything you don't understand.

So, what is vegetarian?
Through travel to NY and India, I saw many vegetarians.
This experience made me think about this topic.
I want to write down how my image has changed, and what I think now.

I think, for most Japanese, vegetarian is a person who is unbelievably religious, live in a country far from Japan.
They have sense which is hard to understand, and so strict to themselves that hurt their health.
This is a typical image of vegetarian, and actually was my image of vegetarian before.

When I visited NY, I met a vegetarian. He was a vegetarian because of ethics.
I realized that there are person who don't eat meat just because of their own opinion, not a doctorine.
In most of the restaurants in NY, there are some dishes for vegetarian, and they show which is for vegetarian in menu, like we sometimes see mark of allergy in Japan.
I realized that there are a lot of vegetarian in America which is familiar country for us.
But still I thought vegetarian is strict for themselves, and I was worried about his health.

Vegetarian in India is quite different from it in America, ofcourse much more different from it in Japan.
Vegetarian and vegetarian food is called veg. Non-vegetarian is called non-veg.
There are many people who have never eat any non-veg in India.
Ofcourse not all, but much more than Japan. I thought it is similar to people who haven't drunk alcohol before they become 20 in Japan.
They are minority, but still not surprising.
They don't need strong reason to be veg. They ar veg because just it is normal in India.
There are no beef, no pork in Pune. More that half of foods I see is veg.
To be veg in Japan, I need a big effort to find veg food, but in here, It is much easier.
I saw a sign showing "No non-veg and smoking here".
This fact mean that there are some people who feel uncomfortable with a person eating non-veg food.
One Indian coordinator said not so many people, but there are a few people who don't like non-veg person because they kill other animal.
Since I saw this sign in country side, and I see non-veg food everyday in city side, I guess rate of veg is higher in country side. In country side, veg is majority, familiar, and non-veg is minority which is thought as foreigner hard to understand.

There are one more episode I thought interesting.
When I go out with veg and asked that "How do you think about non-veg?"
Their answer was "What nutrition people need to live is different depending on each person."
They accept non-veg, but still they need reason to accept.
I expected answer something like "I'm veg because I want to. I don't care, whether other people wants to eat non-veg."
I felt that non-veg is still something strange and need effort to accept for them.

I used to think, we, human beings need animal protein to live healthy, but it was wrong.
A lot of veg live healthy in India.
So, am I allowed to eat other animals?
When I was a children, I used to wonder whether I am allowed to kill and eat animals.
At that moment, I thought, I need to eat animals to live, so it's okay to eat other animals.
If it was wrong, how can I allow myself to eat other animals?
I know I can live healthy without meat, now, but still I want to eat sushi, beef stew, and many other non-veg food, just because they are delicious.
This means, I want to kill animal to have a delight.
Am I selfish? Is it thing to be blamed?

In a Japanese animation, Madoca Magica, a character Kyube explains relationship between people and farm animals.
He says, it is a ideal symbiotic relationship.
Farm animals can live safe, because of people's protection.
While some wild animals are endangered, there are enormous number of farm animals.
They are protected from everything by human. They don't need to live in competitive wild life.
Do you agree with him?
We can decide our life, learn a lot of things and do what we want to do, but farm animals can't.
Is it ideal symbiotic relationship?
Half of my heart agree with him, but the other half says it's too biased.

There are so many people who earn money by non-veg food and who pay money for non-veg food.
Our economy includes non-veg food, already.
I think I will keep eating non-veg food.
But, I want to remember that I eat other animals, and there are people who don't like it.
I hope more and more restaurant begin to have veg food in Japan.