Tsukiji Market

One of the famous tourist stops in Tokyo is Tsukiji fish market. It's the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. It basically supplies the 30+ million people in the Tokyo metropolitan area with food. The main attractions for tourists are the tuna auction and sushi breakfast. The tuna auction got so popular that they actually had to set up areas for tourists to watch from because it was affecting business having tourists standing around everywhere.

The main problem with the market is getting there. Work begins at the market in the early hours of the morning, but the trains don't start running until much later. This poses the problem of how to get there early enough to see the real action. The tuna auction is open to tourists between 5 and 6:30 am. So you pretty much have to get there in that time frame. The subways to the Tsukiji stop only start running a bit after 5 am.

We met up at 5 am at Akihabara so we could take the Hibiya line down to Tsukiji. I got on the Yamanote line at 4:30 am. I actually got to the station just as it was opening. Not surprisingly, it was pretty empty. As it turned out, no matter what method of getting to Akihabara i thought of, they all involved me leaving my apartment at the same time. I thought of riding my bike to Akihabara, but that would take about an hour. I thought of walking to Tabata and getting a different train, but the added time walking just negated any other benefits.

By a stroke of luck, Steve and Matteo ended up getting on the train in the same car as me at Uguisudani. That might have saved a bit of trouble locating them at Akihabara, but it was completely empty at that time of day. We had planned on meeting at the Shouwa Dori exit, so when we got there we just waited around for Laura and Rob to show up. Once we all assembled and I introduced everyone to Rob, we headed to the subway and to Tsukiji.

In Tsukiji we had a mild idea of where the market was. Laura, Steve, Matteo and I had seen it from our cruise down the Sumida river. Other than that we weren't sure, but not too concerned. When we got there we actually just followed some signs. At one point, we decided to just turn down a side street and figured we were close enough that as long as we walked along the river we'd find the market.

We walked down the side street and soon realized that we had in fact found the market. We were dodging scores of motorized carts whose drivers were really skilled at maneuvering them, but were also not going to slow down for us. Rob pointed out that it felt a bit like Frogger. We kept walking around and saw some of the sushi restaurants that you can get breakfast at. We noted the location and kept going. We eventually found a couple other tourists who had a map of the market and got a bit better oriented. From their map we saw that we just needed to start walking down the rows and rows of stands, because the market isn't very orderly. You sort of just walk in and wander around. If it seems like you shouldn't go somewhere, that's actually where you should be walking. If you start going somewhere you shouldn't, someone will stop you.

So we had found the market and started actually seeing fish in various states of being alive. There were also tons of clams, mussels, conches, and abalone. They have band saws for cutting the fish down and some 5ft knives for it as well. Most of the fish comes in to the market frozen directly from ships.
We still hadn't found the tuna auction though. We went to where we thought it was, but only saw a door that said "Authorized Personnel Only." So we headed outside to get our bearing again. We found another guy with a map, but this time a guy who worked at the market came up and asked us where we wanted to go. He just took us there and pointed the way. Apparently, we were supposed to go through that door, because you ARE allowed in between 5 and 6:30 am.

The auction was almost over by the time we got there, but it was still interesting. I took a video of one of the auctioneers because he was so animated. Since the auction was winding down we decided to walk around the market some more and to get some breakfast. It probably took us another half hour to wind our way out of the market, all the while dodging the motorized carts.
We got back to where we had seen the restaurants and the one that had had a line outside when we walked by earlier, still had a line out front. We couldn't really tell why there was a line, since all the restaurants looked the same. I just looked on Wikitravel, which said that a few restaurants make it a point to only serve fish that has never been frozen. From what I could tell, the fish next door that had been frozen were still delicious. We ate and left and there was still a line at the place next door.

On my way back home, I passed through Akihabara station. I was pleased to see that the giant line of people waiting to get to the Yamanote line platform weren't heading my way. They were heading towards Tokyo and their 6 days-a-week, stressful day jobs.