Tokyo day 3 - Tsukiji market and Odaiba

Thursday 2nd May, 2013

Today started at 0326.

It should have started at 0220.

The reason for this crazy early start was a desire to see the famous Tsukiji tuna auction.

The tuna auction starts at 0530 but only 120 tourists are allowed in to see the action. Despite that early start it’s a very popular activity and so you don’t want to haul yourself out of bed before dawn only to arrive at the market and find that you’ve missed out on one of those spots.

So imagine the panic when Christine woke up, looked at the clock and realised ‘someone’ had rolled over, turned off the alarm and gone back to sleep. As it was we’d been overly keen to think we needed to get up at 0220 – when we got to the market at about 0400 about 10 to 15 people had got there before us. Had we set off as planned we’d have been the first to arrive and had an even longer wait for the action to get under way.

The Lonely Planet advises people to get there for 0430 but on this midweek Thursday the full complement of 120 was in place by 0420 so there is a fairly narrow window of opportunity – 100 people arrived in 20 minutes.

We were separated into two groups of 60 (the number is dictated by the space available in the auction room). We’d made it into the first group and so after waiting for things to get under way we were ushered through the market and into the auction room. Tsukiji is a working environment – it’s busy, people are going about their jobs so 60 random tourists picking their way through the trolleys and lorries and getting in the way of the people who work there must be quite frustrating.

On the floor in the warehouse were the tuna carcasses (maybe the pictures will be distressing so I’ll leave them on Flickr rather than include them here). When they’re laid out like this you can see why tuna needs to be ‘dolphin friendly’ – so much more in common with those mammals when not just some flakes in a tin. The fish merchants spent some time inspecting the fish by hacking at the tail flesh – you can tell the quality of the whole fish by just its tail – and then the auctions started.

It’s a very exclusive experience – 120 people a day get to do it but frankly it’s not worth the early start. For twenty minutes you stand in what’s essentially a cold room, full of dead fish, while some men shout and other men make imperceptible hand gestures or nods of the head. So I don’t think I’d do it again but if you did then I think you’re better to be in the second group (I’m sure if you’re there early you can ask to go later) because we spent most of our time straining to see what was going on at the far end of the room whereas the second session included the sale of most of the fish we could take photos of.

Still, it provided an excuse for a fresh sushi breakfast (we didn’t go to a place inside the market because the queues and prices were ludicrous).

We didn’t go back to the public market choosing instead to make the most of our early start by heading to the man-made island of Odaiba. It’s a place with shopping, eating, museums and amusements reached by driverless train over the Rainbow Bridge (Tokyo’s Golden Gate Bridge-a-like).

We were drawn there by the National Museum of Science and Emerging Technology. Although it’s really aimed at teenagers we still enjoyed it with one of the highlights definitely being an ASIMO demonstration who despite being over 10 years old is still very impressive.

We considered visiting Sega’s Joypolis but decided against it instead having a nice wander round the island, complete with a ride on a Giant Ferris Wheel. Odaiba is also home to the Toyota Megaweb which had attracted a surprisingly large crowd seemingly because you can take any of Toyota’s cars for a spin. They do have a wonderful collection of historically significant cars but ultimately it’s just a massive show room.