06/02/2002   English German
  Edition # 40  
San Francisco, 06-02-2002

Tokyo Fish Market

Michael In a warehouse district near the Shimbashi train station, the Tokyo fish market, the largest in Japan, takes place every day. Around 60,000 professional buyers search for fresh goods for their restaurants and shops starting at four in the morning. Tourists are not actually allowed there, but the travel guide mentioned that you won't be thrown out as long as you don't stand around stupidly in the way and disrupt people while they're trading. As usual, there were no signs, and we wandered around the district for a while until we finally made our way through the vegetable market, escaping recklessly zooming motorized cart drivers, into the fish halls.
Figure [1]: Crazy cart driver

It was bustling there, you can't imagine. Buyers were darting at a run through the narrow alleys between piled-up styrofoam boxes filled with dead and live fish, shellfish, and other sea creatures. Fish sellers were chopping up the partially frozen fish with axes, sawing them with electric saws, and amidst an indescribably fast and loud chaos, the trading was taking place.

Figure [2]: A tuna is being cut up.

Like a guerrilla squad (small teams, strike quickly, disappear quickly), the dynamic newsletter duo dashed through the aisles, took photos, and ducked for cover between fish boxes every time a grumpy fish monger came running or a crazy cart driver wanted to pass by.

Figure [3]: Rambunctious Fishmongers

We stalked through the cauldron for about an hour, thrilled by the fish glowing in supernatural colors under the bright spotlight, the flashing pieces of ice, the professionalism of the sawyers and the hackers, overwhelmed by the noise -- and always on guard and ready to jump aside to not obstruct the market activity. After an hour and 100 photos, we made our way out. What madness!

We had breakfast after the experience at the counter of a well-visited sushi restaurant located on the edge of the market. Raw fish and beer at nine in the morning can only be handled by the iron stomachs of your dynamic newsletter reporters! The sushi was wonderfully fresh, and even the usually tougher items like squid and shellfish were nice and tender. By the way, the sushi chef at this establishment had a knack for giving the piece of dead fish on the rice ball a quick, powerful slap just before serving, causing it to arch slowly once more when placed on the wooden counter, from where you pick it up with chopsticks and devour it.

The portion of sea urchin (orange, looks like tripe) that I had never taken from the conveyor belt of the floating sushi restaurant in San Francisco tasted somewhat musty. And Angelika absolutely couldn't manage to eat the small white worms, each with two staring eyes at the end (Chirimen Jako), so Michael, who is known for being unfazed by anything that can be washed down with beer, had to take over. The secretly curious onlookers (and of course, as always, entirely Japanese) and the staff were impressed by these two tough Europeans.

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