In Review: Thanksgiving Break, 2008 (part 2)

Or, Title #2: Fish Heads, Fish Heads, Roly Poly Fish Heads

Evidently, Tokyo has one of the largest fish markets in the world. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Jennell, Chey, Julia and I taxied our way to this market at 5:30 in the morning dark to take a gander at this site/event and to actually witness the fish auction—which, according to the others who had already checked off this experience on the list of Tokyo To-Do and To-See, would be all over by 6:30.

While viewing the prologue to the auction—buyers investigate the slab of flesh cut out near the tail of the flash frozen tuna and jot notes on a small notebook—this other tourist guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, could I step in front of you to take a picture of these buyers arguing about the price for that tuna?” “What buyers arguing?” I asked in wonderment. He nodded at three guys in quiet discussion about six feet beyond the tape outlining the boundary of the visitors’ section of the floor. “That’s the most civil argument I’ve ever seen,” I added. He said, “Yeah, well, this is Japan!”

After the “prologue,” these auctioneers, situated in several different areas of the room, climbed up on stools and started talking fast and rhythmic. I had a hard time figuring out who was buying what, but someone must have been buying because these other worker guys began slapping papers on various tuna carcasses as the auctioneers continued chanting. And it was all over by 6:30.

We walked back through the fish market and investigated various Styrofoam trays and boxes containing all manner of “fruit of the sea” and even stopped to watch some guys slice up a large tuna. The market had a lane of food stalls where apparently you can purchase some of the best, certainly the freshest, sushi and sashimi in Japan. By 6:45 queues had formed at all of them, and some patrons were already savoring a breakfast of sushi/sashimi and beer! (Michael pointed out later that a lot of these patrons were the fisherman who had brought in their catch to the market, and morning marks the end of their work day.) Since I was the only one in the group who does sushi/sashimi at all, we didn’t stop. The only thing purchased was an umbrella for me because I forgot mine and it was pouring down rain outside of the covered marketplace!

Back at the hotel, Jennell and I ate breakfast in one of the hotel cafes, returned to our room, removed our shoes, and crawled into our beds for three more hours of sleep! Sometime that afternoon, Jennell remarked that all those fish heads we saw reminded her of a song her parents used to sing when she was little, and then she actually sort of sang it to me. Although the tune stayed with me, I couldn’t remember all the words, so I emailed her last week and asked if she would sing me the words again. She adamantly refused, but she did send me this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcXA_pkfLso&feature=related