I fought against myself not to use that incredibly cheesy update title, but in the end my desire to embarrass myself until the end of time won through. Also, as I sit here writing this now, a huge typhoon rages around just outside the thin walls of my apartment. If I don’t make it through, I leave all my photos of shrines and dead fish to you, the reader.
I couldn’t sleep last night. I can’t really sleep at all right now – it’s rainy season, my air conditioner is on it’s last legs, and to top it off, whichever idiot is renovating the flat next door to us decided to renovate the wall where my head is pretty hard for about two hours at one in the morning. If he does that again I’m going to renovate a patio door down his throat. I think I got to sleep at 1am, which made waking up at 5.30am quite a challenge. Still, I did, as this was the day I was going to Tsukiji Fish Market. Apparently, the market carries over 400 different types of seafood, is world famous for quality sushi, and handles over 2000 metric tons of seafood each day. I assume that does not include the boats because otherwise that’s not really very impressive.
One last word of warning – if you are squeamish you might not want to click any photos in this update. Fish with no heads abound!
Basically, after hopping off the train and walking for a few minutes, a powerful smell overwhelms you and you feel like you’ve just been hit with a haddock. You spend the next twenty minutes trying to dodge the miniature cars they use for transporting the fish and eventually you make it inside the oversized barn that the market is held in. Once you are there, you wander up and down the millions of isles, being pushed out of the way by irate old fishermen and enthusiastic old women, desperately trying to stay dry. An endeavor you will inevitably fail at.
I am about to tell you about two things that happened to me during my visit to the market. I want to make it absolutely clear that before today, I held no grudges against fish. I quite like them, especially when they are swimming around in big shoals. Plus, I enjoyed Finding Nemo. However, this alliance ends today.
- The walkways between each set of stalls in incredibly thin. As a result, you have to walk very slowly. This gave one fish that wasn’t quite dead yet a chance to thrash around in a vain attempt to escape. This fish failed, but the water that was ejected from the box as a result of it’s fight made it’s way rather quickly to me, where it covered me. Entirely. Thanks a whole lot, you stupid fish.
- Not more than ten seconds later, we came to the end of the pathway, and prepared to go back across the market the other way along the next pathway. However, just as I was stepping out, an eel which was not in any way dead leapt from the box it had been put in and started thrashing all over the place. It cornered me and I was afraid it was going to come down to Shorinji Kempo, which might be quite hard against an eel as I’ve only practiced against foes that have arms and legs. In the end, the fisherman responsible for this feisty rebel cut it’s head off. Another victory for mankind!
That’s right. I was assaulted twice today by fish. I bet nobody has ever used that sentence before.
Aside from my near death experiences, the fish market was a pretty cool place, especially if you like seafood. The people who took me were pretty professional fish buyers, as not three hours later we were tucking into a delicious meal of fish, fish and more fish. Whilst watching the English language channel on the TV, which I tried to translate as best I could. (I couldn’t).
So there you have it. Another day, another salt water bath. I would definitely recommend going to the fish market if you are in Japan and can stand getting up at about 5am. You really need to be there by 6am to get a proper look around the place. I shall leave you today with a picture of the killer eel’s brothers, no doubt saddened at the loss of a comrade. Remember that I had just suffered a terrible assault, so to take this photo took bravery unmatched throughout all of human history. Or something.
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ah, from some weird reason kitakyushu and kagoshima got hit by the typhoon very badly, although kitakyushu wasn’t really supposed to be, but fukuoka was fine. Actually we were kinda disappointed, as most of us have never seen a typhoon before. lots of people turned up for the yamakasa festival here, where lots of fundoshi wearing men ran around in freezing typhoon-wind weather. it rained and there was wind, but it was kinda normal and not typhoon-like. ah well, by now it must have passed tokyo. so much for my desire to experience a typhoon. of the one prefecture I was at, the typhoon didn’t come at all. oh well, good thing i guess.
I hate seafood -_-
zahzah: Yeah the typhoon was a bit of a letdown. I kind of wish I’d gone to the fish market during a typhoon to watch the fish escape though!
Jamaipanese: You might want to avoid that, then! ;)