One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

We did not celebrate Thanksgiving in a typical way this year, as it is not a holiday in Japan, we don't have an oven and most of the typical foods are hard to find here. Instead, we went out to eat at a great Italian restaurant near our house and took advantage of the long weekend to make a trip to Tokyo.

It was fun! One of the most interesting things we saw was the Tsukiji Fish Market. This market is a Central Wholesale Market where fishmongers go to auction their bounties. In addition to the auctions, which are not open to the public, there are well over 1000 stands in a hangar where fishermen sell seafood to food sellers and restaurateurs.

We managed to arrive around 7:30am on Saturday while it was still bustling. The hangar is very crowded, with people, produce, fish, fish guts, forklifts, Styrofoam boxes, and hoses which are continually washing down the floors. We enjoyed seeing frozen fish being sawed into chunks with power tools, eels being sliced into fillets, shellfish being shucked, and squid being displayed in bins of their own ink. Fascinating and well worth waking up early!

But, the best result from our weekend trip is that we now have lots of ideas of what we might want to see when we visit Tokyo again soon with our friends!