Tokyo-Day 2: Tsukiji, Museums, Ginza

We are up this morning at 4:00 a.m. and out the door at 4:30 a.m. to meet the taxi. Twenty minutes later, we are at the Tsukiji fish market, the largest of its kind in the world. I had read a lot about this and have wanted to see it. There are over 1,700 stalls of people selling the largest variety of sea life imaginable. We arrive this early to view the tuna auction. It’s a big deal, as tuna is like seafood gold.

The flash frozen tunas from all over the world are lined up.



Cuts are made in them for prospective buyers to inspect the meat and even taste it.





They are marked with paint.



I really enjoy seeing the culture of the work place. People who might never have met otherwise are brought together by a common business.





Shortly after 5:00 a.m., the auction begins with the loud ringing of bells. The auctioneers are very animated as you can see in the video.





We wander through the stalls. It’s just unbelievable the variety of sea life in the world, and equally so that someone somewhere has determined how to make all of this edible.















After a couple of hours at the fish market, we go to the food stalls to have what must be the freshest, finest fish breakfast possible. The tuna sashimi pictured below is the best I’ve ever had. It is served with shredded daikon radish, some sliced pickled daikon, rice, and tea. Aaron tries unagi (freshwater eel) for the first time and enjoys it very much. The gentleman serving us is quite chatty. He keeps taking pieces of paper and writing us things we should learn in Japanese or writing calligraphy, or sharing some other thing with us. We leave with a handful of pages he has written for us.









We go back to Asakusa station, then walk to the Drum Museum. It is very interesting and hands on. We are the only ones in the room at the time. A lady led us in, left us some different sticks and mallets, and told us which ones we could play. We couldn’t take pictures, but she wanted to take one picture of us posed as below.



From there, we go to the Sword Museum. It is quite a trick finding it through some winding streets, but we do. The amazing thing about the sword museum is the remarkable craftsmanship that was evident as early as 900 years ago. Those swords look identical to the swords made in the 1800’s. It’s the slight variations in curve or length that tell the era. This is a Tanto sword (short side sword) made in the 1300’s. They busted me after I took this picture. I didn’t see the No Photos sign.



Something familiar is sometimes nice when you’re traveling, so we eat at the McDonald’s across from the train station. For those of you that track this kind of thing (you know who you are), Japan McDonald’s serve the old school style fried apple pies. You just can’t beat them.

After changing trains at Shinjuku station (the busiest train station in the world – two million people per day!), we head to the famous shopping district, the Ginza. The Ginza is impressive. The street is closed to cars and people are everywhere this Saturday afternoon. Most of the shops are on the very high end, but it is interesting to see.




We go back to our room about 4:00 p.m. to take a short nap. We hit the bed and wake up from our "nap" at 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. We have been up ever since.