Tokyo Fish Market

The fish market in Tokyo is, I think, the biggest in the world. Apparently if you get there for about 4am you can see the famous tuna auction. This is of course ridiculously difficult/expensive considering that the underground stops at midnight.

If I haven’t mentioned before the JR (Japan Rail) company operates all the trains, half the subways and many busses and taxis. Therefore they shut down at 12 to make you pay for the more expensive taxis. This isn’t the only reason for it, the Japanese are seldom out late in the same way we are, and, if they are, they will stay at a capsule or something.



This all meant that we aimed to get the 5:10 am train in order to get to the fish market for around 6. Still plenty of activity available and plenty fun to be had.

We went in a crew format, with about six others from the hostel in tow. This slowed us down a bit and was a little gay. It’s quite annoying looking out for people in an environment as busy as the market was. Anyway it was fine really and me, harry and Steve just kept an eye on each other.

The market itself was teeming.

Vans, people and crazy men on bizarre fork lift trucks zoom around essentially trying to run you over. The trucks had a flat back with a round cylindrical front. The engine was under this and it was also were he stood, controlling the whole contraption with a massive steering wheel.

We saw awesome machines, much like the one Doc Brown creates on Back to the Future III, we creating and then cutting huge blocks of ice. Fortunately for Japanese productivity they were more effective than the one pioneered in Hill Valley in 1885.

We walked between all the tight little lanes examining some of the most bizarre fish you could ever really imagine. Everything that I had eaten in the last 3 weeks was wriggling and oozing around on trays and in little carried bags. I photographed most of it at the great displeasure of the stall owners. At one point I photographed a huge crab, only to see a guy come out of his hut looking at me grumpily. Instead of chastising me he decided to let me and the odd Dutchman I was with hold it. Check out the pic.

We sampled some of the fresh fish in a Sashimi restaurant in the small lanes near the market. The queues outside the sushi places were huge but not for the sashimi. He shows a high level of idiocy on the part of the local tourists. Sashimi is essentially sushi but all in one bowl without the rice. Anyway it was half the price and had no queue. We win. The owner of the bar was heavily tourist friendly and spoke good English, which is actually quite rare in Japan. Apparently we were dining with some Japanese celebrity TV actress. He was fawning over her heavily, too be honest she looked a bit embarrassed about the whole thing. Being a celebrity must be a total arse.

On the way home we stopped off in the catering district to see the shops were they sell all the plastic food to the restaurants. If I haven’t previously mentioned every restaurant in Japan have fantastically accurate plastic replicas of the food it serves in the window. The shop was awesome. I would have loved a plastic bowl of noodles but it turns out that buying plastic food is a rich man’s game.

A Spanish day was decided upon and we staggered home to sleep.