Seeing Buddha

Friday-March 31.
After another sleepless night, we woke up again super early to hit the Tsujiki fish market-the market typically opens around 5 am for the fish auction to local restaurant vendors, but if you ask around, half of the people will tell you it is open to the public, and half will tell you it isn’t.

Since I was not willing to leave the hotel and get our busy day started at 4 am, I decided to believe the second half-and just think that it wasn’t upon to the public. But, we did get up at 6, out the door at 6:45, and made our way to the market around 7:45. The streets of Tsujiki are filled with fisherman and local workers just getting off of the night shift hunched over their sushi, or bowl of noodles. Paving the streets to the fish market, there are tons and tons of stores selling everything under the sun-Japanese knives, paper, ceramics, and a TON of fish-smoked, dried, fresh, etc.

We made it to the fish market by 8, and it was still buzzing with activity. Carts are zooming by left and right with the fish purveyors delivering fish and moving their wares from one side of the market to the other. This is not a typical tourist area-so they do not slow down for the Caucasians, they just continue mulling about their business, and it’s up to each person to make sure they don’t get run over by these carts. The carts nipped right past our noses a few times, but luckily, Al and I were there to yank each other back.

As we meandered through the fish market, it was totally fascinating. There were people hacking away at the biggest fish heads I have ever seen. The pictures can only do it justice-if I tried to describe how big it was, it would only seem like a fishing legend. In some of the stalls, they needed a hacksaw to get through the thickness of the fish. At one stall, we stopped to look at the beautiful tuna, and one of the older gentleman handed us a piece of freshly cut tuna sashimi. “Toro?” he offered. Of course! It was one of the most succulent pieces of sashimi I’ve ever had.

Another thing we noticed were the men hacking away small bits of meat from these huge fish. It wasn’t until we left the market that we realized that they were bonito pieces, which were to be fried and smoked and eventually used to make dashi, or the basis for misos, sauces, etc. Almost EVERYTHING seems to smell or taste like bonito.

We walked through the maze of the Tsujiki streets, freezing to the core. It was a super cold day out, and while we had on our layers, the wind whipped right through to the core. While everyone (including the guide books) recommends sushi while in Tsujiki, we just couldn’t stomach sushi that early-especially as cold as we were. We settled on a nice bowl of noodles in a delicious thick broth. Mmmm!

After the fish market, we decided to do a trip to Hase to see the temple Kotoku-in’s Great Buddha. We traveled about an hour outside of Tokyo to get to the Buddha, and he was a sight to see. Sitting at about 37 feet with cherry blossoms all around, this bronze statue was everything I had hoped it would be. We even got to walk inside his belly! Cool!!!!

We walked around Hase a little bit-it’s a super cute town, and it was nice to get away from the buzz of Tokyo for a few hours. After walking around, we made our way back to Tokyo, and headed to Harajuku. This is the infamous area that all of the teenyboppers in their baby doll dresses hang out. The fashion here is totally different than most of Tokyo (with the exception of Shinjuku and Shibuya which are both relatively close). Most of what we had seen in Tokyo up to this point had been business men and women wearing suits-but it was cool to see the punk rock side of Japan. Lots of hairdye, piercings, neon, and thigh highs.

After walking around for a full day, we retired back to the hotel early and I ended up passing out (finally) and caught up on some much needed sleep.