Back in Tokyo

Last Sunday aftenroon, on the bus from Narita to our neighborhood, I was so happy to see Tokyo again. Of course we enjoyed almost 6 weeks in the US, but it's very exciting to come back here for what is effectively our junior year abroad.

The next morning (Monday), I celebrated by taking the children to the Tsukiji Fish Market for the daily tuna auction. It's the ultimate touristy thing to on your first morning after a flight from the US, when you wake up around 4 a.m. But I hadn't seen it before, though Blaine has. Lucinda, Arno and I arrived at the market at 5:30 a.m. and weren't too far back in the long line waiting for the auction.


Visitors walk on a fairly narrow path through the middle of the auction warehouse, where massive frozen submarine-shaped tuna are laid out for examination. Wholesale buyers cut a piece out of the tail and look closely with flashlights. For what? I have no idea.

One side of the room:


Other side of the room, with even bigger fish:


Man with flashlight looking at tuna:


After our auction visit, we walked around the market a little - we'd been there before - and then considered the final step in our touristy plan: to have sushi for breakfast. I had no idea where to go, so Lucinda told me how to say "sushi breakfast" in Japanese and I stopped a well-dressed man in his 50s, but clearly not a laborer, who was wearing tall black rubber boots (a sign of someone in the know at Tsukiji).

"Sushi breakfast?," I said, in what must have been appalling Japanese. I expected him to vaguely point me in some direction, but he briefly looked us over, took pity on us, and beckoned for us to follow him. Then he set off at a clip with us trailing like ducklings, fending off trucks and mechanized carts as he walked for several minutes and several blocks. An astonishing generosity toward tourists.

When we reached the outside market section, with small restaurants and produce shops, where he greeted several shopkeepers, grinned and pointed his thumb at us, saying something I guessed was the equivalent of "I'm taking them to find sushi for breakfast!" The first place on his list was closed, so he kept walking until he stuck his head into English-friendly restaurant #3, established that a "sushi breakfast" was available - and waved us into the door. I thanked him, and he strode off. Here's the place:


I ordered, yes, a sushi breakfast of 8 pieces and miso soup for Lucinda, who told the waiter in Japanese that she didn't want wasabi, plus sea urchin and ama-ebi sweet shrimp for me. (Arno ate some milk-caramel biscuits I'd bought earlier.) Lucinda then consumed her first serious raw-sushi meal, when the fish wasn't masked in, say, a California roll. She proudly ate scallop and fatty tuna and yellowtail and amberjack, plus crab and shrimp - and said she liked it.

Arno photographed the meal:


And his own breakfast:


And his shoes: