It's really not as hard as it looks...
Since it was so early in the morning, the subways weren't all that crowded. Apparently many Japanese take a week off surrounding New Year's, so perhaps there weren't as many people trying to get to work.
Once we arrived at Tsukiji Station, it was just a short walk to get to the Wholesale Fish Market. What awaited us there was unbelievable! It was pure chaos. There were people and seafood everywhere. The building itself is huge, and completely crammed full of little stalls where people were selling there wares to buyers for restaurants all over Tokyo (and the rest of Japan, probably). They have these little motorized cars that zip around everywhere, and there are people on scooters and bikes zipping by all the time. It's amazing there aren't any accidents. You really have to just keep walking once you've committed to going someplace, or else you will get run over! There were also countless people pulling carts of fish. The floors were covered with seawater, fish guts, blood, bits of styrofoam and plastic.
The tuna are huge! People were using band saws and curved, long blades to trim the tuna into chunks to sell.
Frozen tuna after the auction
And to think that this happens every day - unbelievable!
After the fish market, we wandered around the open-air market, where there were all kinds of things for sale, including lots of seafood (duh) and other related products. It was like a farmer's market, seafood-style.
We ate some very fresh sushi at a restaurant quite close to the wholesale market. It was really good, although we weren't too adventurous with our choices. We had the medium sushi plate, which had some tuna and other fish we couldn't identify. We also ordered the spiny lobster sushi plate, and we washed it all down with Japanese green tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment