Crate & Barrel, Japan Division: If You Are a Fish, Stop Reading

While I did some other things in Tokyo, they're more of the boring walked-through-Shibuya-at-1 AM-and-got-propositioned-10-times-a-minute variety. The craziest thing I did was go to the world famous Tsukiji Fish Market at 6 AM.

Jonathan and Carrie--a bit tired, but game.

While the tuna auction was closed to visitors because it was the busy season, we got to walk all around the biggest fish market in the world. It's impossible to see the scale of the thing in the pictures I got, but it's also one of the biggest food markets in the world period. We walked and walked in a wide circle and it became difficult to have any idea of where we were.

I wish I had something in here for scale, but this was a small tuna and this head was about as big as mine.

Tuna, crab, squid, shrimp, octopus, shellfish, and things I didn't even recognize were being cut up, hauled away, sold on the spot, and frozen for long-distance shipping. It's amazing how close tourists can get to the action. Sometimes a little too close, frankly, as we were almost run over by screeching mechanized dollies more than a few times.

We were almost constantly in the way, even in the area where you could buy fish straight off the water. The push and grind of the market was unstoppable and paid us little heed, but it was thrilling to be in the middle of that. Granted, some of the awe was tinged with sadness knowing about the fairly horrendous overfishing practices of the Japanese.

But it's hard to argue with the sushi you can get just a hundred yards from the market, where we stood in line for a half an hour to get 8 pieces of the most amazing sashimi I've ever had.