Tsukiji Part the Other One

The site of Tsukiji has been "blogged to death" by tourists and foody folk. But this is Emmerson and Ada's take on a really cool place that their dad had wanted to visit for years. Three years living in Tokyo and I never ventured into this part of town, mostly because I was surfing or playing soccer on most early mornings off. Wish I had as it offered up some seriously good food at reasonable prices ... and some really cool knives and fish.

And, the market is planned for a move to a more state of the art market where more efficient movement of the products will be possible.  So this is a part of an iconic cultural landscape that will no longer exist in reality, going forward primarily in the pictorial and verbal musings posted on various websites - thank you bloggers - and my girls for posing along!

Ada with some frozen tuna cuts on a cart ready for whatever will become of it within the next hour or so. That is what is particularly cool about this market - it is all gone by the end of the morning - bought for use in some form or another. Japanese cuisine has a quite dramatic paradox - super fresh on one end of the food spectrum and super preserved on the other. The majority of Japanese food can be fit into these rather contradicting categories.

Emmerson with some serious cuts of tuna belly bound for a sashimi platter somewhere in Tokyo.

Fish.

A whatever one of those type of saws used to cut through the larger, less fragile part of the tuna - mostly head and tail - as the box attests to.