Go Fish!

Last Saturday evening I received a voice message from Jenn. I was expecting her to call me back about some plans for the weekend, instead she informed that she had fallen off the ladder to her loft, which is 8 to 9 feet high. Luckily, a friend of hers was there to take her to the hospital... unluckily, she broke both her wrists and got a black eye. I stayed at her apartment for the weekend to help her out, but she actually was/is functioning quite well despite having ridiculously limited use of her arms and hands. Since the friend who was with her at the time of the fall was actually visiting from America, we didn't want to make him just sit around, so we actually ended up doing quite a bit over the weekend despite Jenn's injuries. On Sunday we went to Shibuya for ramen from my favorite ramen shop (the one where I took my parents) and then we went to Harajuku to see the rockabillies and cosplay (the people wearing crazy costumes). That night we hung out with some people at Jenn's local favorite, K's Cafe, and while we were there we decided to stay up all night and go to Tsukiji Market first thing in the morning.

Tsukiji Market is a huge, famous fish market in Tokyo and if you get there early enough you can watch the tuna auctions. I had heard about it quite a bit before but I had never gotten around to going because frankly, I'm not a morning a person. Staying up all night was definitely a better idea and going with other people was good too. We left Jenn's apartment around 4:30 to 5 am and caught the first train. It took about 20 minutes to get there but finding the actual market was a bit of a challenge. Jenn knew the general direction of the place but not where the specific building was so at one point we stopped and I asked a woman, in Japanese, "Where is the big tuna?" because I didn't know the words for auction or market. She pointed us in the right direction and we knew we were in the right place when we had to start praying for our lives. Tsukiji Market has a reputation for being quite dangerous and rightly so! As we walked into the giant warehouse speeding fish carts of death came careening towards us from all directions, it was terrifying. We walked along, dodging the carts and following people who looked like they knew where they were going, because we still hadn't actually seen any fish. Eventually a man told us where to go and when we arived we were pretty surprised. In the guide books and excerpts online it is normally made to sound as if there is a viewing area set off to the side specically for tourists... this is not exactly accurate. There are actually just big open doors, like the giant garage doors at a car dealership, they have signs on the side of them that say DO NOT ENTER, we stood on one side of the door and the fish lay on the other side. We were kind of in the way but busy workers just ran and drove around us, apparently used to obnoxious tourists standing near their fish. Now let me tell you about these tuna... they were ENORMOUS. Picture an elephant, now a picture a fish the size of an elephant, that's what these tuna looked like. Okay, so I exaggerated a little, but seriously, these fish could eat you whole... if they weren't dead... It was amazing and we were standing right next to them, I could have the kissed one of them had I developed some abnormal fish kissing desire, or if it were my birthday (I apologize, only people who went to my camp will understand that). In another part of the market we also saw lots of other exotic varieties of fish and seafood, some of which were still alive. I used Jenn's phone camera to take lots of pictures since I hadn't brought my own camera and I will try to post some soon.

Tomorrow I leave for Hiroshima! I'm really excited about this, it will be the farthest from Tokyo I've gone since coming to Japan and I'm traveling alone so it should be an adventure! I'll let you know how it goes when I get back!