I think one of the things you have to do when in Tokyo is to go to the Tsukiji fish market in Ginza. This is where fish arrives early in the morning, and is then distributed to the various restaurants around the city. You’re supposed to go there at some ungodly hour like 5AM in the morning to really see what it was like. We kind of had plans to do that, but by the time we got there after walking the wrong way for awhile (it happens a lot in places that don’t have proper addressing or oriented maps) ended up arriving around 7AM.

Even though the fish market is a tourist attraction for some, it’s a real operating market and feels like it. There are motorized vehicles screaming past you, people yelling Japanese telling you to move because they’re pushing a huge slab of tuna on a wheelbarrow, turtles being weighed and frozen fish being cut. It’s an experience to see the enormity and throughput of the fishing industry.

The second thing to do at the fish market is to eat sushi. This is the place you can get the freshest sushi (unless you can find some small town where a fisherman plucks it out of the ocean and then prepares it for you) and there are quite a number of sushi restaurants there to cash in. Our friend Ed, recommended two to us, Sushi Dai or Daiwa and they were good recommendations because even at 7 in the morning, they were line ups outside the door.

We waited maybe 20 minutes and got a seat at the bar for Daiwa (well they only have bar seats). I’d love to say that this was the best sushi I’ve ever had, but really I don’t know how to classify “better”. It did taste different if that’s a good sign!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: food, japan, travelling