Tsukiji Fish Market, Shibuya, and Shinjuku

Posted by Chelsie on May 23, 2015 | 4 comments

Wow, what a day! I’m sure you will see from the pictures that we covered a lot of ground in our first day and saw many very diverse sights.

We started off at the Tsukiji fish market, a huge sprawling complex made up of the inner fish market and the outer food and kitchen wares market. The pictures don’t do the size and impressiveness justice. The smells are out of this world and the diversity of snacks, seafood, sushi, knives, etc. etc. etc. is amazing. The first thing that caught my eye (or maybe more accurately, my nose) was some delicious bubbly, porky soup. They had a quite a line going so we made a note to try back tomorrow. It only took us about 2 seconds to agree we would be back tomorrow, and that was before we even tasted anything.

Next we wandered on through the maze of vendors and spotted a woman selling beautiful raw oysters with a bit of sauce (ponzu?). It was a delicious and fitting first bite in Japan and was likely the freshest and tastiest oyster I’ve every eaten. We purchased the smallest ones and they were absolutely HUGE. Then it was off to find some real breakfast which of course at the fish market means one thing…sushi! Andrew, John, Micah and I enjoyed a beautiful bowl of toro (fatty tuna), uni (sea urchin) and roe. Delicious and quite a steal at only 10 bucks. We definitely would have paid at least three times as much at home for that quality. After some more browsing, and even more snacking (warm omelet, skewered squid with eel sauce, crunchy Japanese snacks) we headed over to the inner fish market where the actual seafood is sold. This part of the market doesn’t open to tourists until 9:00 a.m. (it was only 8:00 at this point), but Micah had done some research ahead of time and found out that if you tell security guards “kaimono” (I’m shopping), they will let you in. With our most confident demeanor, we tried it and guess what? It worked! Even with Andrew and John’s giant cameras, they let us in although I will say that they looked pretty skeptical. “The fuzz” as we called them tried to track us down multiple times, but we evaded them pretty easily in the crowded and overwhelming market. The market itself was an intensely-packed jumble of vendors and buyers and sold about every kind of seafood you can imagine, and even lots you wouldn’t imagine. Crab, giant tuna, live octopus, just about every mollusk, sea snails, monkfish liver, tiny quid, medium squid, giant squid, whole fish in thousands of varieties and with the clearest eyes you can imagine, live snapping turtles, sea urchin, sea cucumber, and the list goes on and on. The market stretches on for what seems like a mile of crowded tiny walkways where there is barely enough room for one person to pass at a time. Also, there are motorized carts that workers zoom around on at breakneck speeds and if you are not careful you can easily meet your doom. Good thing there were a few of us. More eyes means we could watch out for each other and yell or grab an arm when a cart was zooming by.

After all that excitement, we headed back to the hotel around 11:00 to rest a little before taking the Subway to Shibuya to see the famous Shibuya crossing and witness teenage Japanese fashion at its finest. When we first exited the station, we had a little trouble finding the right intersection, but once we did it was incredibly recognizable. Shibuya is one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the world and every few minutes, when the walk light turns green, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people rush to cross the street in every direction imaginable. It was amazing to me that with so many people, there weren’t any collisions. We had a fun time crossing in every direction before deciding to find some lunch. We settled on a fun ramen spot where you order your food at a machine and then the waitress brings it for you. It was actually a great system for us since there were lots of pictures and we don’t speak Japanese. The ramen was delicious. Great broth flavor and consistency and the noodles were cooked to perfection.

After enjoying the madness of Shubuya, we decided to head a little further north to visit Meiji-Jingu Tokyo’s most famous Shinto shrine. It was a stunning and peaceful shrine nestled in what seemed to be a pretty large forested area right outside the city. While we were there, we got to see two wedding processions which were really beautiful.

As if we hadn’t seen enough already, we topped off the night with what can only be described as a “bat-shit crazy” (Andrew’s words) robot show in the crazy Shinjuku nightlife area. We saw it on one of Anthony Bourdain’s shows and knew our visit to Tokyo wouldn’t be complete without it. It was basically an hour-long assault on the senses with lasers, robots, loud music, girls, dancing, drumming, animatronic animals, someone in a panda suit riding a plush cow, epic battles, clowns, costumes and lights galore. Take a look at the photos and see for yourself.

Cheers!

Andrew and Chelsie