Get your fish here!

As some may already know, the two of us plus a visiting friend went to Tokyo about two weeks ago. The trip was amazing all around. One of the sights we took in was the Tsukiji Fish Market. This is a world famous market, fully functional, totally hazardous, and fast paced. In fact, this locale even made the list of the top 1000 places you must see before you die in a book that our friend had read.



This wasn't any walk in the park. You can't just saunter up at 10am, Starbucks in hand. Oh no. We woke up at 5:20am. That's AM if you weren't reading closely. ;) This is after we had spent the previous night out at dinner and karaoke with friends. I pretended that I was a morning person back when I played volleyball and we had 7am workouts. I pretended again when I worked for a coffee shop in college and woke up at 4:45am. However, I was purely pretending. 5:20am is not a happy time for me. Nevertheless, persuaded by our friend's fervor (she is a morning person), off we went. We took a taxi and got dropped off at the outside market that lines the bay (Not to be confused with the inside market. The inside one is the actual Tsukiji market). After pretty much discounting everything they had for sale, we headed in to the market. It was pandemonium if you ask me. I have absolutely no idea how people aren't seriously injured on a daily basis. Men were quite literally racing around on motorized buggies of sorts.

My description isn't doing it justice. I guess that's why it's on that list of places you should see for yourself. The market was enormous. There was an open area where the auction for that day's tuna took place (see the first photo), but beyond that there were rows and rows and long rows of booths for fish and seafood. Many merchants were in the process of killing their "wares." I'll spare you the photos, though. Many had tanks of live fish. And others sold other types of dried food and things I didn't recognize. It was a lot to take in. I think the most surprising this for me was the shear speed with which everything was taking place. More than once, I had to get myself out of the way of a man on buggy-thing, a man with a wheelbarrow, or a man with crates.

Once we had gotten enough to fill our sightseeing duties, we left and browsed the outdoor market once again. We headed back to the hotel and hung out until a couple hours later when we could once again pursue our tourist agenda. The next place we headed was Akihabara (or Akiba for y'all "in the know"). But that's another post. :)

Note: The second picture was taken by yours truly, but the first was taken by our friend. And used with permission as long as we give her credit. (Thanks, L.T.!)