WARNING – kind of graphic content aHEAD (you’ll get it later)
Ummmmmm ….
So watching the Tsukiji Fish Auction didn’t go quite to plan.
We managed to wake up before 4am and drag ourselves to the train station. However I hadn’t done quite enough research beforehand otherwise I would have known that we had to be AT the market before 4 to be in with a chance of getting to see the auction, and arriving after 5, as we did, would yield nothing. Saf was not impressed.
However, it was quite lovely seeing the outer markets at 5am. The stalls were all already open, and there were vans full of fish being loaded and unloaded at the street sides. We wandered around looking at fresh urchins, wasabi, bonito flakes and high quality chef’s knives before heading off for breakfast. There’s something to be said for eating French toast (again, super Japanese, I promise) at 6am and knowing that most of the city is still sleeping.
But equally, we were exhausted.
So we went back to the air bnb to nap, with the plan to return to Tsukiji at 10am when the inner markets opened to the public. On our return, the sun was hammering down and this time, the streets were packed full of tourists. Although by this time most of the day’s action is done and over, I’m so glad we made it back as there was still so much to see. Walking through the narrow gaps between the stands in the inner market, and trying not to get run over by the pallet trucks zooming about the place, you could see trays, and buckets and tanks of every kind of fish and sea creature imaginable. Some were alive, others less so. Although we missed the auction, we still got to see the giant frozen tuna being sawn into chunks to be sold on to restaurants and stores.
The weird part about waking up at 5am is having so many extra hours in your day. Even though we’d been to and from Tsukiji market to Oimachi twice, it was still only just gone 11am. We’d had a recommendation for where to get the best of the best sushi in Asakusa, so we made our way there for midday, soaking up as much of the sun as we could. We ended up with sushi as real as it gets. I don’t even KNOW what half of what I ate was, but I definitely ate a snail of some sort. And also fish jelly.
We wandered past the shops surrounding the Sensō-ji temple, pausing a few times to buy slippers and admire a couple of owls being used to entice customers into the upstairs animal cafe (the sandwich board also advertised meerkats, hedgehogs and, for some reason, schnauzers).
Wandering back through the arcade to the station, I told Saf how the only thing I wish I could have tried was cherry blossom flavour ice cream, which I had seen vendors sell in celebration of Sakura season. Lo and behold, what should I spy in the distance but a gelato parlour selling, you guessed it, cherry blossom ice cream. Hurrah!! It was great. Saf went for more conventional banana and chocolate, and we spent a happy ten minutes devouring.
By this point, we’d been awake for so many hours, we both decided to call it a day. Pausing only for some dinner (pizza with tiny whitebait, seaweed and an egg – a bizarre combination) we made it home and got everything packed, ready to leave for Hakone tomorrow morning.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Claudia Bow 