Asia Tour Day 1.5 - Something's fishy

We woke up at 5am this morning. Let me qualify that statement by explaining that we did go to bed at 9:30 last night so it wasn't that bad. We got up nice and early to check out the start of the week (in fishermen's terms anyway) at the Tsukiji Fish Market. It's said that about $2.2 million dollars worth of fishy business is conducted here *daily*--that's over $6 billion per year (and yes, this is dollars and not yen). After almost getting lost on the Oedo line, we made it to the Tsukijishijo station and headed into the chaotic market. There are no words to describe how crazy or overwhelming the vast number of fish and fishmongers were in this market; or in Sarah's words, it was simply "f-ing insane". (I'll show you the uncensored video another day.) We mostly tried not to get run over by the tuna trucks and eventually found the tuna auction happening towards the back of the market. It was crazy! This guy was muttering the tuna lot numbers with buyers making complicated hand signals to signal their bids. One tuna got sold probably ever 5 seconds!

Then we were off in search of Daiwa, one of the most well-known old-school sushi restaurants adjacent to the market. We almost tricked by another line that had formed in a restaurant two doors down, but luckily we read the signs and finally ended up in the right line. We squeezed into these two tiny seats at the sushi bar (there were two bars and about 20 seats total in this place) and said hi to our hunky sushi chef who almost immediately started to make us sushi in rapid-fire motion. One piece after another of insanely-fresh sushi were placed in front of us: toro, uni, ika (squid), half-rolls of ikura and tuna, anago (freshwater eel), hamachi, more toro, and tamago. Top it off with green tea and miso soup and we had ourselves a perfect Japanese breakfast. It was by far the freshest sushi I've ever had in my life. And this was all eaten before 7:30am. Craaazy.

We headed back on the Hibiya line to our hotel and decided to stop in one of the 3 or 4 Starbucks in Roppongi Hills. First they made Sarah's chai the wrong size, then they made the espresso shot in my drink too short, and then they remade Sarah's drink wrong. *sigh* Maybe those bad fortunes from Sensoji hadn't been completely blown away by the wind yet! We decided to give up and buy new drinks at SBC (I know...it's a heresy for me), and now we're back in our hotel room enjoying them as we download our pictures from this morning's adventures. And it's only 8:30am.