Warning: This post is not for the faint of heart or those easy-to-be-queasy. It is, in fact, a posting about a bunch of dead fish. Millions of pounds… of dead fish. Read on at your own risk.
So when I first began researching Tokyo, the Tsukiji Fish Market was the place I most looked forward to seeing, even if it did mean getting up at 4 a.m. I thought to myself “I grew up around farms where they had tobacco “markets” like this one and even slaughterhouses (more delicately known as ‘processing plants’) – this will be just like that.” Just how many ways could I have been wrong on that?! 😉
I awoke at 3am – see previous post – and by the time I opened the curtains at four o’clock I saw that it was absolutely POURING rain outside. Lovely. A quick (efficient, again) cab ride to the market and I was on the prowl by 5:15 a.m. I expected this to be a highly AROMATIC experience – not so. Must be the difference between just a few hours out of the water and what we receive in my beloved landlocked state. This huge wholesale fish market is the largest in Japan and one of the largest in the world. The action here starts early: At about 3am, boats begin arriving from the seas around Japan, from Africa, and even from the States, with enough fish to satisfy the demands of a nation whose culinary priority is seafood. To give you some idea of its enormity (remember: “gi-normous”), this market handles almost all the seafood — about 450 kinds of seafood — consumed in Tokyo. The king is tuna, huge and frozen, unloaded from the docks, laid out on the ground, and numbered. Wholesalers walk up and down the rows, cigarettes hanging from their mouths, jotting down the numbers of the best-looking tuna, and by 5:30am, the tuna auctions are well underway. And the auction activity itself is like a cadence — a kind of song-like (almost chanting) exchange between the auctioneer and the bidders. It reminded me of (forever ago) fraternity days when the leader would call out and the rest of the group would respond in kind… It would be a stretch (or the effects of jet-lag) to say it was mesmerizing — but it was…
The market is held in a cavernous, hangarlike building – perfect for a rainy morning. Men in black rubber boots rush wheelbarrows and carts through the aisles, hawkers shout – knives chopping and slicing… this is in stark contrast to the sea of black pants and white shirts I would see commuting to the offices later this morning as men made their way to work near my hotel in the financial district. The mixture of old and new is fascinating – about half motored around on a stand-up two-stroke engine platform that looked like a barrel on the front hold the engine. It was almost like a zero-turn radius lawnmower with a platform on the back – except I think these things run faster. I ran into a group of schoolgirls and their teacher from Seattle and they marveled at how the workers manage around us tourists. Agreed – it’s like we’re not even there, snapping away with our digital cameras and cell phones.
I bought my first souvenir here… a lovely (pricey) kitchen knife. Had to have something culinary from here, and I just didn’t think the fish would transport well. Then I had breakfast – oh, yummm. Yeah – after all that pre-shashimi viewing, I just couldn’t do sushi for breakfast… So I had tofu. This was no ordinary tofu. I ate in this little hole-in-the-wall where the grandma behind the counter shouted (not intentionally) in Japanese and crossed her arms over her chest like an “X”… I kept asking “Me, no sit?”… She kept repeating whatever she was saying. I finally pointed to a picture of a tofu dish on the wall and she broke into a big smile and pointed at a stool and said – “Sit”… I didn’t ask any more questions after that. She served up the most delicious tofu with thinly sliced beef I have ever ever had. And there I was – in the equivalent of a flea market stall with a patio sliding glass door for an eatery that held no more than six patrons. I love it here already.
