Tsukiji Fish Market

Every person who writes about the Tsukiji Fish Market uses the phrase "ordered chaos" sooner or later.  I thought it was an oxymoron until I actually saw the place -- now I think it's pretty apt. Arguably the largest fish market in the world, the Tsukiji inner market consists of several warehouses, with thousands of individual stalls.  The action starts very early in the morning at the waterfront, where everything from six foot long frozen tuna to barrels of live squid are auctioned off to the primary vendors.  Then the fun begins -- the fish move out through the warehouses to every manner of secondary vendor:  People who need healthy live fish and lobster to deliver to restaurants, people who work a bandsaw and create tuna steaks, people who want only the internal organs of the fish, people who want only the best fish meat for sushi, and so on and so on.  A particular fish may be resold many times before it is reduced to white bones, and I'm sure there's someone buying even that. For all of this processing, the output of the market is actually meant for wholesale to restaurants.  You can get good deals on individual squids and tuna steaks, but mostly the market is set up to supply delivery services that fan out to restaurants and supermarkets across the city. This page has some of the pictures I took while visiting.  (Oh yeah, those amateurs over at National Geographic sent their own photographer over a while ago.)

These are how the fish are sold off the boat.  The bigger ones almost always had their gills punched out -- I'm not sure why.

Hope you didn't think I was kidding about the bandsaw.

Five feet of sashimi, yum!!

These were in the leftover bin of one stall, apparently for sale to whichever vendor came by and needed fish heads.

I tried not to personalize the fish experience, but I have to admit this little guy touched me.  And later that evening, some stranger ate him.

At $10/per I thought the price was a little steep on these.  They were some of the bigger squid I've seen though.

The end of the cycle for at least a few fish this morning.

I never did find out where they dump all of the stuff they can't sell.  There's a landfill with a lot of happy cats living around it, somewhere.

These carts are the major form of cargo movement in the market, and also apparently part of the tourist abatement program.  They stopped for no one. The cart itself is a neat design, though.  The entire thing is driven off of the single front wheel, and the engine, steering, and transmission are all located in that can on the front.  I'm told that the little holes on the side are for ventilating the engine, and not markers for each tourist run over, as I originally assumed.  Who knew?