Tag: people

Sushi for Breakfast, Anyone?

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.

The World of Anime, Tokyo

Everywhere you look in Akihabara Electric Town, there are shops large and small selling manga and anime——animations, comics, books, videos, drawings, games, dolls, and an endless assortment of anime paraphernalia. I know virtually nothing of manga or anime beyond the fact that they exist and are very popular with people a lot younger than I. That said, I enjoyed walking around to see what was on offer. Tokyo’s electric town also has Bic Camera, a five story emporium dedicated to every kind of electronics imaginable. The floor devoted to photography was downright astonishing. It took an act of will to escape with my bank account intact.

Visitors Walk in the Rain, Tokyo

French travelers walk through Tokyo’s Ueno Park on a rainy day.

My first day in Tokyo had consisted of disembarking from my very red-eye flight at about 7:30 in the morning, making my way from the airport to the city, and then wandering around the neighborhood of my hotel a bit bleary eyed until 2:50 in the afternoon at which time I passed the hotel’s check-in goal post. Since check-in time was 3pm, I guess the hotel had cut me some slack after all, though you will have to pardon me for not being particularly grateful. Whatever, within moments of entering my room, I lay down for a much needed nap.

I woke up to find my stomach growling, but before setting off to look for dinner, I stopped to explore my room, a fast journey indeed. On the hotel’s booking page, Agoda listed the room size at 11.5 sq meters. That’s roughly 125 sq feet for those who are still wedded to inches, feet, and miles. In a word: small. As one entered the room, there was a hallway on the left and the door to a very efficiently organized bathroom on the right. The room then “opened up” to a single bed on the right and on the left a narrow desk/counter complete with flat screen TV, a refrigerator underneath and other amenities one expects to find in a good quality budget hotel room. The bed and the desk were divided by a rather narrow walkway. Though a little soft for my taste, the bed was comfortable and plenty roomy enough, even for my rather too abundant physique. I put my luggage on the floor at the far end of the room where there was a window. Years of living in crowded China taught me to travel light; today my travel gear consists of a single, small carry-on bag, and a small back pack, even when I go on longer trips. For those of you who can’t take even a one week journey without an enormous suitcase, budget hotels in Japanese cities are probably not for you. Everything in the room was spotlessly clean, and as I would learn during the days that followed, housekeeping was capable and meticulous. For the record, despite being annoyed at the long wait to check-in (3pm was check-in time for all of the hotels I considered in Japan), I was very satisfied with the New Ueno Hotel——friendly, efficient, clean, and quiet, all in a great location.

I had delicious grilled eel for dinner.

The next day (9 Oct) I was awake early. I am always awake early these days——I suppose one of the dubious perks of being a senior citizen. It was cloudy and the small street behind the hotel was wet, but there was a man walking along the street without an umbrella. Encouraged, I put my camera in the back pack and took off for more exploration. When I got downstairs to leave the hotel, I realized that the man I had seen with no umbrella was either eccentric or looking for a place to buy an umbrella to replace the one he had misplaced. It was not raining hard, but I needed to open my umbrella as I struck out walking in the direction of Ueno Park.

I entered the park and stood under a canopy created by huge trees lining the park paths. Wet but beautiful. Suddenly, the steady but light rain gave way to an absolute downpour. I beat a hasty retreat to Ueno Station where I sought out coffee and a chance to get upset reading news from the United States on my phone. A while later, full of caffeine and bile, I found the rain had subsided and I set out again. Even on a wet somewhat gloomy morning, Ueno Park is beautiful.

Kiyomizu Kannon-dō Temple in Ueno Park

As the rain gave no indication of stopping, nor did the day give any indication of clearing up, I decided this would be an ideal time to visit the Tokyo National Museum, one of several museums in Ueno Park. The flaw in this plan became more apparent as the path towards the museum became more and more crowded the closer I got to my destination. Not surprisingly, plenty of other people shared my idea. Not in the mood for a very crowded museum visit, it seemed time to end my walk and find a quiet, dry place to consider what I would do later in the day.

Raw Rainy Day Morning, Tokyo

My Vietnam Airlines flight to Tokyo (Narita) left Da Nang at just past midnight on 8 October and arrived at 7:30 the same morning. There is a two hour time difference between Japan and Vietnam; flight time was roughly five and a half hours. Narita is some distance from Tokyo, and there are a number of options for covering the distance. Taxi or car service would have busted my trip budget before I checked into my hotel, so they were out. My choices boiled down to an express train taking 50 minutes for around $20 or a limited express train (i.e., a train that makes several fewer stops than a local train) taking about an hour and fifteen minutes and costing about $7.

I opted for the $7 ride, first because I am cheap about expenses like this, and second, during a trip to Japan I would rather spend my money on sashimi than spending an additional $13 to save 25 to 30 minutes on a train ride. A third not unimportant consideration: Whichever train I chose, I would be arriving at my destination in Tokyo a bit before 10:30am and check-in time at my hotel was 3pm. Three o’clock? A bit late in the day for a check-in time, don’t you think? But all of the three hotels I booked in Japan had check-in at 3pm and check-out at 10am. And the place in Tokyo would not cut me even a little slack. Four and a half hours wandering around the hotel’s neighborhood on a couple hours of sleep after an all-night plane ride made for one grumpy curmudgeon by the time 3pm rolled around.

By the way, have I mentioned it was raining? I have lived almost 35 years in East and Southeast Asia, and this was my first visit to Japan. Rain on the first day of that long-awaited visit was definitely not on my wish list. It was not a hard driving rain, but it was hard enough that I used an umbrella, among various reasons, because I didn’t want my new, well-engineered, expensive, water-resistant but not waterproof camera directly exposed to the rain as I walked around waiting for check-in time for my hotel room to roll around. And just to dot this particular “i”, holding a camera and composing a photo while juggling an umbrella is not really my idea of a good time. Grumpy curmudgeon indeed.

It rained on my second day in Tokyo as well. Though after that, with the exception of a bit of drizzle in Kyoto, the weather for my remaining 13 days in Japan was lovely.

Untangling the Nets, Phan Thiết

Along a street near the big Phan Thiết fish market, a group of mostly men were at work untangling the nets used to catch the fish. These days, no natural fibers in sight – the nets are made of a thread-fine synthetic of some kind. After watching for about 10 seconds, I realized I had no clue how these people went about sorting out and making sense of the huge piles of netting they were working with. Better them than me. I would go off the rails completely in a matter of minutes trying to untangle all those tiny threads.

The Fish Market at Phan Thiết

Phan Thiết, a city of more than 200,000 people, lies on the coast of the East Sea about 165km east of Saigon. For ten or twelve km on either side of its urban center, large areas administered by Phan Thiết stretch along the coast. To the east is Mũi Né, a well-known tourist destination drawing both Vietnamese and international visitors to its beaches, sand dunes and recreational activities.

Phan Thiết has a large fishing fleet and a wholesale fish market that sells the fleet’s daily catch early in the morning pretty much every day. It seemed worthwhile to visit the market with cameras, so my Ke Ga host, Mark, and I got ourselves up and on the road to Phan Thiết by 6am. The market was still active when we arrived around 7am, though there were already signs of people getting ready to pack up and go home.

No shortage of hairy eyeballs targeting the guy with the camera.

This guy gave life to the expression “built like a brick shithouse.” He did not have a warm, friendly look on his face, so I decided a profile shot was the better part of valor.

The market was definitely the place to go in Phan Thiết for fashion statements.

It’s a long, early morning at the market.

Final Market Day Before Tết, Hoi An

The Bà Lê market is close to my home; I do much of my shopping along this market street. Tomorrow is the lunar new year’s eve, and today was the final day to shop before the big holiday. By late morning when this shot was taken, the crowd had already begun to thin out, and by mid-afternoon most of the vendors would be closed up. Tomorrow, there will be a few stands selling their wares at much higher prices than usual, but most of the shops and stands will be closed, in this market, in Hoi An, and for that matter, throughout Vietnam. Tết is definitely holiday number one in Vietnam.

Today, the street was lined with people selling flowers, both various kinds of cut flowers, and some flowering plants in pots. These flowers are beautiful, but not purchased as decoration. They are part of the worship that will take place on the first day of the new year (this Saturday) and at other times during the holiday. My partner, Minh, uses the English word “worship” to describe the activities of Vietnamese families on the first day of Tết. In fact, this day is one of the occasions when families pay respects to their ancestors. In Vietnamese, the expression is cúng tổ tiên. The word “cúng” can certainly be translated “worship,” but the English word comes loaded down with considerable Judeo-Christian baggage that has little to do with Vietnamese practices. I personally prefer “pay respects to” or “honor” ancestors to describe what Vietnamese do on Tết and at other times of the year, though I have no doubt there are people who will disagree with this interpretation.

In any case, many of the market’s transactions consisted of the sales of flowers.

Not everything was flowers. This man is loading his cart with coconuts for delivery to a seller who will make coconut milk drinks for shoppers.

Finally, I am guessing this woman is done with her shopping and thinking, “Let me out of here.” That is certainly what I was thinking by the time I took this shot.