So on day two we had the ridiculous idea of waking up at 3.20am to venture out into the cold and dark and watch the famous Tsukiji Tuna Auction. You are advised to get there early to queue up and get yourself on the list as one of the two groups of tourists allowed in to this early morning madness. There was already a queue when we got there at around 4.20am, but luckily after a few minutes we were herded into a warm room, albeit without anywhere to sit, as we waited for our 5.25am viewing. We were very sleepy as we stood around waiting, wearing silly yellow vests and arguing about whose great idea it was to come out at this hour to see some fish. However, when we finally went in, it was quite fascinating to see the men checking the quality of the tuna by hacking at it with large hooks, looking at it for a few seconds and then moving on to the next one. During the auction they bid using their hands, so you are forbidden to use flash photography, wave your arms around like a madman or do anything that would distract the auctioneer from the bidders.
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| Me Looking A Bit Sleepy In My Silly Yellow Vest |
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| Using A Large Hook To Check The Quality Of The Tuna |
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The Slightly Mad Auction Room
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Inspecting Slices Of Tuna With A Torch
The usual tourist course of action after the auction is to wander around the market and have a sashimi breakfast. However by the time the auction was over we were ready to go back to our bed, and at only 6am we didn't fancy waiting the 3 hours before the main market opened to the public. So we decided to go back to our hostel for a well-earned nap, and do the rest of the fish market properly the following day at a more acceptable hour.
After our nap we felt refreshed and up for some raw fish! We ventured across the river to a revolving sushi restaurant (the sushi revolves, not the restaurant), but unfortunately it was closed. A kind lady from a nearby hotel directed us to another one, and we had a very delicious and reasonably priced lunch of sushi and squid tempura.
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Sushi Restaurant
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| Delicious Sushi! |
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| Squid Tempura |
We then went for a wander not far from our hostel towards 'Sumo Town', Ryogoku. There weren't any events on at the time, but we still wanted to see the stadium and museum. It was a nice area and a friendly American guy directed us to a traditional Japanese garden which we had a stroll around.
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| Alex Outside The Sumo Stadium |
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| Traditional Japanese Garden |
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| We Managed To Find The First Few Sakura Blossoms Of Spring |
That evening, we wanted to finally have our posh birthday meal... but it was a bit of a disaster. It was pouring down with rain and we headed out far later than we meant to, and took the subway to Shinjuku Station which is the busiest in the world. It was completely mad and it turned out that the restaurant we were looking for was a long walk through this huge station. When we got there, they were near to closing time and had no tables available, so we went back to the station where we had seen plenty of restaurants, and picked a small udon noodle eatery. We were tired and a bit annoyed about the evening, but the food was actually really delicious and we were glad we had a chance to try it.
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| Beef On The Left With Mixed Tempura And Seafood On The Right |
