Saturday morning at the Fish Market

Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market (Tsukiji Shijo) is the world's largest fish and seafood market. It's a favorite first stop for tourists when jet lag wakes them up the first morning at 4 a.m., because the market opens at 5 a.m. and holds a daily tuna auction after 6 a.m. (My Seattle friend, Julie Weed, took her family there on their weeklong trip to Tokyo.)

We weren't organized for the jet-lag trip, but we went to Tsukiji today and saw plenty - even if we did arrive at 10 a.m.

We took the subway




and wandered into this enormous market with cobblestone pathways splitting hundreds of tiny seafood stalls.



This man had abalone, squid and octopus in his stall.



Motorized carts zip around carrying boxes, ice and fish guts



A few thousand TONS of seafood are sold here every day. We saw hunks of halibut, frozen slabs of tuna, sacs of salmon roe, King Crab legs, eel (Lucinda's favorite), and bags of dried sardines. (The prices are in yen, of course, and $1 = 115 yen if you want to do the math.)








At a restaurant this weekend, Blaine and I ate this snail-like mollusk raw and marinated in a vinegary sauce - very chewy and a bit gooey.



At the end of the work day (noon), these men cleaned their enormous knives



Here's one last pic, of Arno smiling next to a bloody, dead fish! Charming.