Here's Anna in the Tokyo Fish Market, by far one
of the most arrestingly surreal experiences to be had in this
already surreal country. I took this on our second visit here
in two days. It was totally worth going twice, once to just look
and once to take photos. The name "fish market" understates
the immensity of this operation. We're talking about a square
mile of bustling, beehive-like activity, where thousands of people
unload and package staggering quantities of fish. This is where
something like eighty percent of the world's tuna supply passes
through every morning, along with box after box after box every
other conceivable sea creature. We saw shrimp from Saudi Arabia,
vegetables from Italy, oranges from California, some unidentified
something from Reykjavik. You can get wholesale octopus ranging
in size from an inch to a couple of feet - ditto crabs, eels,
shrimp, clams, scallops, etc. People are cutting up five-foot
tuna with bandsaws and three-foot samurai swords. There are sea
squirts, sea cucumbers, more kinds of flounder than I imagined
existed, varieties of unidentified snails and molluscs. There's
something like a garden-variety goldfish, except a foot long.
It's much tidier than you would expect - no fish guts on the floor,
no cigarette butts, etc - and the fishy smell is actually pretty
low-key, especially since it's drowned out by the petrochemicals
from the lawnmower engines in the little carts zooming around
everywhere. It's an especially good tourist activity because things
are really hopping from four to seven AM, and what with the thirteen
hour time difference, we were wide awake for it.
