Fishing for fish

What is the first thing you would do after getting off a night bus in Tokyo? Shower? Sleep? Coffee? Well, I felt like a raw fish for an early breakfast! And the famous Tsukiji market was the place to go…

I had been to quite few crazy Asian markets while traveling but Tsukiji located in the central Tokyo really took my breath away. It is composed of the inner market (wholesale market with auctions) and outer market (wholesale and retail market with restaurants). This bustling market intoxicated all five senses and the visual especially. It was a rambling mosaic consisted of fish, seafood, seaweed, vegetables, fruits, flowers, ice, plastic bags, boxes, kitchenware and other stuff. I say: the more mess the more fun! The way how where the fish presented and even the ice cut was a form of art by itself. Maybe a bit too graphic sometimes but that was an unseparible part of it. Lively soul of the market was guaranteed by laid-back intermediate wholesellers and shippers driving dollys and hurrying in the markets’ tiny corridors back and forth. Just watching the wholesellers casually drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while preparing fish and trying to chat with them, was a lot of fun. And the tuna craze! It seemed to me that the tuna at Tsukiji was some kind of “sacred sacrifice and delicious spirit” that took various forms. As well as it was the superstar of the famous morning tuna auctions, sold for incredible amounts of money and treated with respect to its excellent meat. In fact Japanese people like tuna so much that they are getting close to eat it all away… 
There was also a Shinto shrine with stone monuments near the marketplace. I found out later that the Namikayoke Shrine is memorializing the fish, which backed up my observation about the respect of Japanese people towards fish. According to anthropologist- Bestor, who wrote a 400pages study(!) of Tsukiji itself: “the monuments honor three broad species of seafood by name-shrimp, clams, and monkfish- and two general culinary categories (sushi toppings and fish that arrive alive and are then killed here)…honoring the memory of fish that had given their lives for sushi.” I don’t think this is good enough for hardcore vegetarians though. For more information and fun about Tsukiji check out the documentary Fish is our life.

Although Tsukiji was well known by tourists I haven’t seen too many of them during my visit. They were mostly hanging out at the sushi restaurants waiting in lines for some so-fresh-that-still-almost-moving sushi and sashimi or some other ultimate culinary delights… Oh yeah…my belly can’t wait to be back there!