An insider's tour of Tsukiji Market
Photos from inside the famed, now-shuttered Tokyo fish market
Few travel experiences have lived up to the time Naoto Nakamura guided us through the bowels of Tokyo’s now-shuttered Tsukiji fish market.
I’ve written about this before for Taste in a story titled “Elegy of a Tsukiji Tour Guide”, which focused not just on the market but on our guide himself. While I believe that story does justice to Nakamura-san’s remarkable tours, the format and length requirements given to me simply didn’t allow for a proper visual representation of the tour. Even here, in this newsletter, I’m limited by how many photos I can include (thanks to gmail’s size limits).
But Tsukiji was a place worth seeing. Even though it meant that their fish wasn’t from local waters, and had in fact been flown thousands of miles from its place of origin, restaurants across the world would proudly proclaim when their goods came from Tsukiji. And the complex itself was a sprawling beast within Tokyo, a marketplace that enveloped a large train station, had its own Shinto shrine, and an easily accessible periphery of tourist traps souvenir shops and world-famous sushi restaurants. Naoto guided us in the dark between the light pooling from open doorways, and revealed an invisible path as we navigated our way through one of the most iconic, famous food sites in the world.
Now, it’s closed, replaced by a new, shinier, (probably cleaner) market called Toyosu, which lies in a completely different neighborhood. Tsukiji, as it was, really shouldn’t have existed. It was a crazy mess, a place that worked because it had to and which grew beyond its initial conception. But work it did, and it was glorious, and even though it’s now gone we are better off for having had it.
The external outer market of Tsukiji, known as jōgai-shijō, is known in part for its restaurants. While some of these are world famous down-to-business joints with minimal decoration and a very stripped down aesthetic, others have…well, a bit of a Disneyland character to them.
Sometimes it’s hard to gauge whether spots like these are designed for international tourists or for domestic Japanese visitors. A lot of casual Japanese restaurants have plastic food in their windows and overtly promotional storefronts, including big plastic statues such as the “please hug me!” man featured above, and that includes restaurants that are clearly intended for a Japanese clientele.
Our tour of Tsukiji began at around 2am, before activity had really begun to pick up. It was important for us to get the market early because wholesale activities took place before retail markets opened. If regular markets opened at 8 or 9, that meant the wholesalers were there at 4 or 5. We had to get there before all of them.
Japan is covered in shrines of all shapes and sizes, and that includes within the neighborhood of Tsukiji. Here the Namiyoke shrine is dedicated to Shinto gods connected to the various goods sold in the market, with the primary god of this shrine being Ukanomitama-no-Mikoto, who can ward off disasters and calm dangerous waves. This particular god is important to this place because the Tsukiji neighborhood is actually built on landfill. Pushing back the ocean required honoring and housing the requisite god, and this shrine helped to keep the waves from reclaiming the landfilled bay.
Tsukiji is a complex with a distinct exterior and interior, but it doesn’t exactly have walls, and once we pierced the perimeter there was no immediate sense that we were within the market. That’s particularly true as the first sign that you had even entered the market was just a bunch of trucks, which when you’re on the ground doesn’t look like much of anything. This shot was taken from the top of a parking structure.
We began our tour by navigating dimly lit parking lots and by dodging around (and sometimes hiding behind) delivery trucks. Tours of the inner market weren’t technically illegal, but this was a place of industry, and there’s a reason they kept tourists out of the interior. The last thing Tsukiji’s administrators needed was for some dumb American to get flattened by a forklift. If security caught us we’d be thrown out (which is exactly what happened later.)
The artisans who butchered fish in Tsukiji were meticulous and safety minded, but that doesn’t mean that they were working in totally sterile environments. While I’m sure their equipment and workspace were kept clean, this tuna was being cut apart in what was basically a covered garage.
At least some of the tuna were also offloaded from trucks using what looked like a dumpster hoisted up by a fork lift. A guy with a big meathook would grab the tuna and unceremoniously kick them into the dumpster, which would then take them into a warehouse to be sorted.
The massive tuna were frozen solid, so I’m assuming that means that their flesh wouldn’t be bruised by being hauled about. Given that some of the tuna which moved through Tsukiji sold for literally tens of thousands of dollars I can’t imagine they all received the same rough treatment.
The market also sold a massive assortment of foods and fresh ingredients, including fish cakes, edible flowers, gorgeous individually wrapped fruit, and basically any other fresh product you could think of. This photo is of fresh wasabi, which is expensive, and not to be confused with the weak green paste that comes in a tube and is served at 99% of all sushi restaurants in America.
Uni (sea urchin) being graded and priced. This room was a refrigerated vault with a door we had to manually open and the interior was silent as the men inside graded the fish. They did not appreciate being ogled by uninvited guests.
In addition to the stock warehouses was an administrative building, housed in an old train station. The administrative building included offices and support services, such as this modest canteen.
Here three men discuss how to best butcher a gorgeous tuna. Our guide told us that the man in yellow was the head honcho of the fish cutters. While we were initially afraid of being spotted, he ended up gesturing us over to show us in greater detail what they were working on.
A fish the size of a tuna doesn’t require a knife, it requires a sword. And it was shortly after this sight that we were ejected from the market. It had gotten to be between 4-5am and with the increased number of vendors came stricter security, and a greater number of guards.
Naoto had warned us we would probably be spotted by security, and that if we were he would disappear. Our instructions were to simply do what we were told and that he’d meet up with us once the guards had escorted us to the perimeter. The kind but firm security guard who intercepted us told us to walk in a straight line through the market. When we exited one zone, another security guard would magically appear to make sure we stayed en route toward the exit. And when we reached the outer edge of the interior of the market they wished us a pleasant visit, and melted away.
Naoto Nakamura guided us through a number of different warehouses, and was a patient, knowledgeable guide. We’ll never forget the morning we spent with him in the bowels of the world’s most famous fish market. If you’re in Tokyo, book his new tour. If you’re not, buy his book!
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