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imomusDespite years of coming to Tokyo and living in the city, I've never visited the place every breathless tourist recommends within the first few sentences, the favourite item in every Tokyo Guide's must-see list: the Tsukiji Fish Market. I've probably never visited it precisely because so many foreigners gush about it. But last night Hisae, Risa and I drank quite a bit at Office, came home to crash, and couldn't sleep. At 4am we decided to go to Tsukiji, which is a ten minute walk from our flat at Shiodome. And yes, it is incredible. I put together a little film of it.
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It's already fairly light by 5am on a summer morning. The Tsukiji site (the market is due to move somewhere more remote shortly -- banners proclaim "We're not leaving!") is vast. There's a big market full of 24-hour sushi restaurants, fish flake dealers, knife sharpeners, vegetable merchants, all packed into patina-darkened booths. Then, past the shrine, you enter the main complex, a vast curving structure a bit like Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. It's incredibly dangerous -- round-fronted diesel carts are darting all over the place, stopping suddenly and reversing around corners. As a tourist, you feel very much in the way of the people working, but they work around you oblivious (or casting casually lustful glances at the women). I got a strong impression of being in a Miyazaki animation. The strange craft, the somewhat exaggerated faces of the workers, the swarming activity -- it all felt like a scene from Spirited Away.
The market curves on forever, with aisle after aisle. It's easy to get lost. But Risa asked a float driver where the central auction hall was, and got detailed instructions. Soon we found the inner sanctum, and the Visitor Corridor you're allowed to enter it by if you're an observer. Bleary-eyed gaijin were already arriving, looking as if they'd taxi'd over directly from a Roppongi nightclub. Some of them -- the British ones, inevitably -- were intensely annoying, drunk and performing fake auctions in loud voices, attracting the attention of the dealers examining the tuna. I wanted to kick these wretches out, but destiny took its own revenge -- they wandered off just before the auction and came back after it had finished.
If the milling market evokes Miyazaki, the inner sanctum -- sheathed by orange shuttered doors and exhaling a mysterious frigid gas from its floor -- feels like a location from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The moment you enter it you sense something religious, out of the ordinary. There they lie, hundreds of fat frozen tuna fish, painted with numbers, little sample cuts just above the tail. They'll sell for about $10,000 each when the auction starts. We witnessed the 5.30 auction, and again the details were both Barneyesque and very Shinto (the girls remarked that it felt like an event at a shrine). Bells suddenly rang, and two auctioneers started to "sing" the numbers out in an arcane and ancient Number Song. Hands were raised, and, as the fish were sold, the orange shutter doors dramatically opened to allow trucks to transport the sold fish away as quickly as possible. It was amazing theatre and I'm glad I witnessed it -- at last.
Afterwards we headed for one of the sushi restaurants and ate sushi so melty-fresh it was more like candy, marshmallow-soft.
[Error: unknown template video]
It's already fairly light by 5am on a summer morning. The Tsukiji site (the market is due to move somewhere more remote shortly -- banners proclaim "We're not leaving!") is vast. There's a big market full of 24-hour sushi restaurants, fish flake dealers, knife sharpeners, vegetable merchants, all packed into patina-darkened booths. Then, past the shrine, you enter the main complex, a vast curving structure a bit like Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. It's incredibly dangerous -- round-fronted diesel carts are darting all over the place, stopping suddenly and reversing around corners. As a tourist, you feel very much in the way of the people working, but they work around you oblivious (or casting casually lustful glances at the women). I got a strong impression of being in a Miyazaki animation. The strange craft, the somewhat exaggerated faces of the workers, the swarming activity -- it all felt like a scene from Spirited Away.
The market curves on forever, with aisle after aisle. It's easy to get lost. But Risa asked a float driver where the central auction hall was, and got detailed instructions. Soon we found the inner sanctum, and the Visitor Corridor you're allowed to enter it by if you're an observer. Bleary-eyed gaijin were already arriving, looking as if they'd taxi'd over directly from a Roppongi nightclub. Some of them -- the British ones, inevitably -- were intensely annoying, drunk and performing fake auctions in loud voices, attracting the attention of the dealers examining the tuna. I wanted to kick these wretches out, but destiny took its own revenge -- they wandered off just before the auction and came back after it had finished.
If the milling market evokes Miyazaki, the inner sanctum -- sheathed by orange shuttered doors and exhaling a mysterious frigid gas from its floor -- feels like a location from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The moment you enter it you sense something religious, out of the ordinary. There they lie, hundreds of fat frozen tuna fish, painted with numbers, little sample cuts just above the tail. They'll sell for about $10,000 each when the auction starts. We witnessed the 5.30 auction, and again the details were both Barneyesque and very Shinto (the girls remarked that it felt like an event at a shrine). Bells suddenly rang, and two auctioneers started to "sing" the numbers out in an arcane and ancient Number Song. Hands were raised, and, as the fish were sold, the orange shutter doors dramatically opened to allow trucks to transport the sold fish away as quickly as possible. It was amazing theatre and I'm glad I witnessed it -- at last.
Afterwards we headed for one of the sushi restaurants and ate sushi so melty-fresh it was more like candy, marshmallow-soft.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 09:35 am (UTC)http://www.tsukijinet.com/tsukiji/kanren/susibun/eng.html
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 09:44 am (UTC)One does wonder however about the sustainability of the industry - and of this famous market - at this level in the longer term.
Thomas S.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 09:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 01:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 01:21 pm (UTC)So funny: the Japanese fish market satisfies because of its connections to old ways, but it also contributes to the destruction of those ways. Things are spiralling out in every direction this way. All we can do is notice the loveliness when we see it, stand up for it/do it, and not get too down about the rest.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 02:05 pm (UTC)Next time - please, I hope there will be a next time - I'll make sure I do it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 04:14 pm (UTC)As delicious it is, sushi is the culinary equivalent of a Hummer. Don't eat sushi, kids. These callous bastards are raping the oceans in your name.
I've dived in nearly every ocean, and I can tell you that I've noticed a difference over the past decade. It's frightening.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 04:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 04:49 pm (UTC)I see nothing lovely there, but then I´ve never eaten fish in my life, so what do I know.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 05:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 05:52 pm (UTC)The rest of it looks like a morgue.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 08:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-26 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-27 12:16 am (UTC)Just thought I would show you this, Momus! It from this post (http://community.livejournal.com/musicsecret_2/10951.html?view=563655#t563655) in a community called musicsecret.
I'll tell you a bit about musicsecret. Usually teenage girls make images that say secrets about their favorite band/musician, usually saying "he means the world to me." Well, seeing how lame this was, a few people banded together and decided to spam the community with fake secrets.
It looks like they decided to use you as their subject. I think this secret about you is hilarious. I think you will think so, too. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-27 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-27 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-27 08:05 am (UTC)Why are they so bad?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-27 12:51 pm (UTC)Whaling
Date: 2007-05-27 06:17 pm (UTC)Much as I love sushi, the Japanese need to start farming seafood more. It appears there are Japanese trawlers all over the world, from Ireland to Fiji, sucking up everything in the sea, to the point where they're also decimating local fishing economies. I'm a bit baffled as to how they're getting away with it really.
Re: Whaling
Date: 2007-05-27 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 10:49 pm (UTC)hyperbole
Date: 2007-06-03 11:22 am (UTC)You would rather have us eating cattle, crazing the planet dry? Or pork, contributing to the toxic waste falling out of the backside of those animals.
Pricey, unsustainable organic vegetables, firmly packaged and transported over half the globe to keep the vegetarian West from having a collective hissy fit.
Even if we all took up freeganism or chewing gravel for sustenance, the eco-system would continue to plunge into the abyss thanks to global warming. Our oceans are doomed just like our rain-forests and our endangered species. In the meantime we have wonderful fish markets like this where people still care about quality and tradition.
Furthermore. Let´s be careful how we sling cultural slurs here. Sushi is not a Hummer by a long shot and Japanese people are not callous bastards for eating fish. (they are callous bastards for what they did during WWII, but that´s another story)