Rachel in Tokyo

This is a blog about an American law school student studying in Tokyo for the semester.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Tsukiji (The infamous largest FISH MARKET in the WORLD)

Ahhhh. The smell of raw tuna in the morning. Can't beat that! Well, actually if you can smell the fish you shouldn't be eating it! Here at the Tsukiji fish market, you can bid on really BIG FISH! They have everything from salmon, to eel, to everything under the sun-- I mean in the sea...But the TUNA is the most popular auction.



Here you will notice a big difference between the tuna pictured here and the tuna below. The tuna here, of course, is frozen. Actually, some of them are 2 months old! Because of the nature of catching the tuna, boats must sometimes troll for a tuna for days before capturing it. Thus, when they do catch a tuna, they are thousands of miles from shore and can't rightly go back just because they've caught one fish. So they FREEZE it- immediately upon capture. Since the boats stay out long enough to make their trip profitable, it may be 2 months before they load up the boat with enough tuna to make it worthwhile.



The FRESH tuna, on the other hand, is worth much more money than the frozen tuna, for the boats, of course, cannot stay out as long with fresh tuna aboard. Thus, they turn right around and come home sometimes only staying out a few days and bringing home a few fish.



Here is one fresh fish vendor selling his goods. We got to the market and took this picture at 5:30 AM! By 7AM he was fresh out!



Some of these tuna go for as much as $10,000 US! So would you rather have a plate full of fresh sushi or a brand new car?



Once the frozen tuna are purchased from the auction, many of the vendors at the fish market cut up their new acquisitions with a BANDSAW! They cut with such precision! You can tell they have been doing this for many years.



Crocodile Dundee would have been impressed with THIS KNIFE!

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