Japan: Tsukiji tuna auction and fish, fruit and vegetable market

Thursday April 23

Last night, after our nap and some reading, we decided to stroll into the hotel gardens again to check out the lovely looking restaurants there.

The only one open was the Sekishin-Tei serving teppanyaki which turned out to be the experience of a life time. It was small and intimate with everybody seated around a crescent shaped counter.

Each group has their own chef;there were six groups. We started with delicious beef soup, followed by raw seabream with caviar and a lovely lime vinegar.

To clean our palates we were given a cactus leaf you dipped in honey and ate whole. Next were lobster tails cooked on the griddle in front of us.

Then huge slices of garlic were grilled and set aside to accompany the beef later on.After cleaning the griddle ( the chefs are immaculate!) we had our choice of three vegetables

followed by the Kobe beef

grilled to perfection, sliced very thin and served with three sauces. For dessert we were moved to another pavilion looking over the waterfall and given melon and strawberries with glasses of calvados or port. This was meant to be a quick meal and early night but morphed into a true feast of the palate.

Our alarm was set for 330 am which was remarkably doable thanks to us still feeling on Chicago time. The lobby was deserted other than some security guards, so we held our breath there really would be a taxi at the stand and he would understand our english as there wasn't a porter or concierge in sight to translate. With lots of "hai's" (meaning "yes") we set off through Tokyo at night and were struck by how much traffic was still, or already, about. We got to the Kachisoki gate and the fish information centre just after 4am and on time to be among the daily allotment of 120 people allowed in, but we were certainly not the first and were put into the second group of sixty.

An interesting talk on tuna ensued to help while away the time. A broker who buys and sells tuna here for over twenty years,explained the best part of tuna is high up on the belly. You have four types of tuna species and wild surpassing farmed. They trade over a thousand tuna a day, with some tuna weighing over seven hundred pounds.

This auction has been going on for over eighty years and they trade worldwide. Frozen tuna arrives from farflung places competing with tuna on ice from the local fisherman. Japan has the largest consumption of tuna.

At 5.50 am we were walked to the main auction hall and kept behind ropes to watch the action.

Brokers prodded at frozen torpedo shaped tuna whose tails had been sawn off. With flashlights they inspected the colour and with ice picks they hacked away small ieces to taste and sniff.

Promptly at six the bells went and bidding started in different sections of the hall with all action over ten minutes later when the whole tunas were thrown on carts to be hauled away.

We returned our group vests and ventured into the maze of alleys full of shops selling knives, food and garments. One knife shop sold blades so long I wondered when a knife becomes a sword. We were planning to go back for the intermediate fish and fruit and vegetable auction at 10 but had four hours to kill. Somewhere I read that one should have a sushi breakfast at one if the many sushi shops in the market to taste the freshest tuna ever. We went to the recommended on, Sushi Dai, and found the line going around the block.

We then decided on the second recommended one, Daiwa-Zushi,a few doorways down with only a mere forty people lined up with the same idea.

We took turns in line talking to the others( many Canadians) whilst the other explored the surrounding shops.

Finally we ventured in to very small area where you perched on bar stools, elbow to elbow and were given the set menu: fresh tuna sushi, sea urchin, eel, shrimp, whitefish and steelhead. Several rolls followed filled with tuna and other fish, ending up with miso soup with clams. All of this washed down with green tea. Definitely the best sushi breakfast I have ever had!

We finished before 8 am so still had hours to kill. After walking around the shops a bit more we decided to go to a nearby park, Hama-rikyu gardens. A three hundred year old pine and a field of vibrant yellow flowering rape seed where the first things we saw. It's a lovely park, by the river, full of birds and lots of stray cats.

After an hour there we joined the throngs going back in for the intermediate fish market and promplty bumped into one of our fellow photographers, who like us, was spending a few days in Tokyo before our group meets up on saturday. She, like us, was enthralled with the variety of fish and shells. Many photographs later, and with a quick detour through the fruit and vegetable market, we caught a taxi to crash back in the hotel.

Tomorrow we catch the train for Osaka. As space is cramped on the trains, Japan has a very interesting service where you send your suitcases ahead from one town to another like a parcel. This afternoon we drop them off in the lobby where this suitcase UPS picks them up for delivery at our Osaka hotel tomorrow. Wish this existed elsewhere! They even have a delivery counter at the airport where we will pick them up on our final leg of the journey as well!

tuna auction