Tsukiji Fish Market: A Fishy Attempt to Post Contest Photos

A year ago I had the opportunity to tour Tokyo, and of course made the trip to the Tsukiji Fish Market - perhaps the world's most remarkable piscine market.

The great advantage of jet lag is arising so early that one can arrive at Tsukiji shortly after the fish. It is an LTH world heritage shrine.

Tuna



Whelks



Squid (I believe)

GAF wrote:Squid (I believe)

Not octopus?

Could be. Or could be extraterrestrial.

GAF wrote:

Since we're being explicit in our identification - these are actually top shells - often referred to as bai top in Korean cuisine and bai gai in Japanese cuisine - also a marine snail, but from the shell morphology, definitely not whelk.

This is also likely to be octopus.

Excellent article on the tuna auction at the Tuskiji market by Nick Tosches in the June 07 issue of Vanity Fair.

Tsukiji is fantastic. It has to be in the top 10 or 20 things every food geek should visit in their lives.

I absolute agree.

If we created a list of World Heritage Culinary Sites, Tsukiji would be high on the list.

It is the best advertisement for jetlag that I know. I awoke at 5:30 a.m., and decided to negotiate the Tokyo subway system (nice because at 6:00 a.m. it is not so crowded). When I arrived at 6:30, the market was in full swing. It was an experience that I haven't had since the days in elementary school when we were taken on a school trip to the old Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan. I can't claim that I understood much of what was happening in detail, but buying and selling is similar around the globe, and people were very nice. And there were small restaurants (slightly above stalls) where some incredible fresh, simple sushi was sold. Nearby (I think opening at 9:00) is a very lovely, extensive garden within an easy walk.

Sushi Dai and Sushi Daiwa, if memory serves, are the two big ones. I ate at whichever had the shortest line that day. Waited about an hour or more. Inside was just a sushi bar. I ordered the middle-priced meal and got round after round of very good sushi.

You know, it's not such an arcane idea, setting up a list of World Heritage Culinary Sites. GAF it's your brilliant concept, care to lead us in a round of suggestions, maybe on "Other Culinary Chat" ?

Science geeks know where to go in their travels, why not us??

Geo

It's nice to see a few images. I visited Tsukiji a couple of years ago, but Kodak lost all my film for my trip to Japan, so I have no record of the astonishing things I saw there. The fish market is particularly amazing, with its daily processing of five million pounds of fish, but the whole Tsukiji area is a delight, with markets for other food products and cooking utensils spreading out around the fish market. The whole area, with all its markets, is known as Tokyo's Kitchen.

GAF - did you get any photos of belt fish -- the long, thin fish that look like they've been silver plated?

Hi,

FYi - Belt Fish are commonly available at H-Mart. When they had their Asian Festival recently, they had samples cooked up. In my opinion, it seemed like a fishy-fish taste akin to Mackeral.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

FYi - Belt Fish are commonly available at H-Mart. When they had their Asian Festival recently, they had samples cooked up. In my opinion, it seemed like a fishy-fish taste akin to Mackeral.

Regards,

I've never actually tasted it. I was just amazed by its unearthly, metalic appearance. It doesn't look like an ordinary silvery-colored fish, it looks like a fish plated in silver.

Not being fond of fishy-fish, I shall now know to avoid trying it and will simply continue to appreciate its appearance.

Turns out that I will be lucky enough to have a one night layover in Tokyo this August... Well from 8:30 pm to 10:30 am... Hopefully I will have the opportunity to show Mike Tsukiji and have sushi for breakfast before I leave!

But just in case I don't get to make it (and not to hijack this thread), is there anything near the airport that is worth doing? ANA is putting us up for one night since our connecting flight is the next day.

From 2005...