Tokyo Eating - Tsukiji Fish Market
We arrived in Tokyo in the evening, we wanted to witness the Tsukiji Fish Market (Tuna Auction) and had read somewhere that it’s best to do this on your first morning in Tokyo as you’ll be jet lagged and awake anyway so why not make the most of your morning? We went to bed at 11pm and got up at 2am… ouch.
Headed over the the Tsukiji Market, waited in a little room sat on a hard floor with 100 other people for the auction to begin.
After a cramped and cold few hours we were brought into one of the big warehouses to watch the event. The auctioneers were ringing a bell and singing/shouting whilst standing on a little stool. It was fascinating to see the process of the fish market, and I had now idea who was betting on what, or who even won. Then the fish were marked, dragged away with big fish hooks and bundled into trucks.
Our visit was over within 10 minutes and we were ushered out into a cool dawn light. Obviously we wanted to eat sushi for breakfast, so we wondered around the side streets off from the main wholesalers area with a keen eye open for somewhere suitable. There were a multitude of sushi and sashimi places, noodle bars, market stalls selling all matter of seafood, bits and bobs shops etc. it was a busy and bustling market, even at 6am!
It wasn’t a worry about whether I’d be able to eat anywhere, we just couldn't decide from all the amazing options we had!
We eventually decided on a lovely little sushi place, with a bench around the preparation area - believe me I think you’ll be fine regardless of where you go! We sat down, green tea was brought to us - I was a little wary of this as I’d heard brown tea was barley tea, but it was fine.
I handed my GF card over, and he pointed out which ones I could have - basically all of the sushi and a few of the donburi options - Donburi means ‘bowl’ in Japanese, usually full of sushi rice, fish, salmon roe, etc. We chose a few of the sushi options and I had, cuttlefish, blue fin tuna (which was amazing!), salmon, and a sweet shrimp. Absolutely delicious and a nice filling breakfast to get us started on our stay in Japan.
