We were literally the first foreigners to step foot in Tsukiji Fish Market after it reopened to tourists – 6am, Monday morning, Day 1 when everyone was just waiting for disaster to strike.  It wasn’t until we were actually in the belly of warehouse, navigating the cramped aisles and dodging the market goers, that I realized how much havoc a single oblivious (or disrespectful) tourist could create, much less a whole crowd of them. 

You see, Tsukiji isn’t like a museum or a zoo, where you observe the attractions from a distance; here, we could climb inside the metaphorical exhibit, no rope to stop us from touching the fish, taking flash photographs 3 feet from fish sellers simply doing their regular 6am job, or bumping into fishermen lopping off the heads of still-writhing fish. 

I honestly don’t blame Tsukiji for banning tourists, and I will be surprised if a similar ban isn’t reinstituted.  Nonetheless, that morning, we were permitted to wander around, utilizing the traffic-dodging skills we honed in Saigon.  Past all tables of blood and gore…

We found sea life of all sorts: eels, turtles, clams, oysters, octopus, squid, crabs, even giant phallic looking lumps of flesh we discovered were snails.  And all of if was within arms reach. Come on – that doesn’t take an absurd amount of imagination…

One of the coolest things were the frozen tuna getting sawed apart.  The tuna are stored on the ship at so many degrees below freezing, they come back as solid blocks of ice. 

This was the kind of tuna that thawed, got sold to a local sushi restaurant, and was eaten by us for breakfast.  Simply amazing to connect these frozen bulbs with the soft almost buttery meat we ate at Tsukiji, but such is the case with most food these days.

All in all, I could see exactly why Tsukiji is such an interesting place to visit – there is so much to see, smell, and discover.  I could also see exactly why Tsukiji was closed to tourists.  I’m not actually sure how one would resolve this.  I’m just glad we didn’t cause any disturbances while we were there…though, maybe on a return visit, we did manage to get in the way for just a little bit.