The man in the photo is getting ready for the day’s business, cutting fresh tuna to be sold as sashimi to people who visit his small stall in Tokyo’s Tsukiji Outer Market. The only way to get all of what he was doing in a single photo would have been to stand directly in front of him and get right in his face. These days I am not as inclined as I used to be to get on top of people with a camera, so I settled for two images to tell the story.
At one time, the Tsukiji Market was Tokyo’s largest wholesale fish and seafood market, a place where freshly caught fish was auctioned off or sold to retail buyers every day in the early morning. Around the commercial market there were food stalls and small restaurants serving some of the freshest sashimi and sushi in Tokyo. For those who liked Japanese style fish for breakfast, Tsukiji Market was the place to go.
A few years ago, in 2018 if I am not mistaken, the wholesale market moved to a new location in Tokyo, leaving behind the food stalls, restaurants, and market stands selling everything from fish and fresh fruits and vegetables to kitchen utensils and household goods that had grown up outside of the buildings where the wholesale market conducted its business. The area was renamed the Tsukiji Outer Market. Today, it is a destination for tourists, both domestic and foreign, looking for good eats and a Tokyo slice of life, as well as for local shoppers doing their marketing.
Some of the eateries had people stationed outside cajoling visitors to try their offerings. There were lines waiting to get served at some places. My thoughts about choosing a place to eat among dozens of choices I am unfamiliar with in a market I’ve never been to before: Walk around, look at the choices, pick one that looks decent. Yes, I do sometimes read customer reviews but am skeptical because too often I see “the best food I had on my trip” followed by “what a dump, worst meal ever.” As for lines, I am very much of the opinion that it makes no sense whatsoever to stand in line at one place because a YouTube “influencer,” someone whom I neither know or care about and who quite possibly is an absolute moron, told me that particular place is special and better than the other places. As for the people who are influenced to stand in line, all I can say is thank you. When I do decide to take a chance on a place that looks appealing, it is less likely to be crowded with people because you are waiting in line elsewhere.
Be all that as it may, I eventually went into a small restaurant that had a menu in the window and nobody outside with a sales pitch. The place had a good feel about it, and that was enough to recommend it. The sushi chef behind the counter served up a delicious selection of sushi and an exotic Japanese mushroom fried in tempura batter. I’d been lucky and picked a winner; I left the restaurant feeling full and satisfied.
One thing it never occurred to me I would see at a market famous for fresh seafood were booths selling Japanese wagyu beef on skewers. I had come to Tsukiji for sushi, and did not pay much attention to these booths or the prices they were charging. It was only after looking at the image below on my computer at home that I checked and discovered ¥5000 is equal to a bit more than $32. Yikes! That’s a hefty price tag for what appears to be a skewer with less than 100gms (about 3.5oz) of meat. On the other hand, I had checked online for restaurants serving Kobe beef dinners and learned that prices for dinners serving the genuine item started around $150, and went up – a long way up – from there. A small skewer grilled by a shop in Tsukiji would have been a relatively inexpensive way to sample this delicacy, but I was not thinking in those terms, and passed on by.
For those with a sweet tooth or looking for dessert after sushi, there were a number of alternatives. Some of the offerings were tempting, but I was full from breakfast. The women in this photo are looking at large strawberries set into pastry shells filled with several kinds of sweet concoctions. I wonder where these women are from. The lady furthest away could be from pretty much anywhere in East or SE Asia, but the woman in the middle is difficult to peg.
I had arrived at Tsukiji Outer Market at around eight on a sunny Saturday morning. There were people walking around taking a look, but the place was not crowded. By the time I finished my sushi breakfast some time after 9am, the market had filled up with people and the lanes lined with shops were packed. It was time to move on.
