Alex hardly slept as he wasn't feeling well so we (paradoxically) decided we may as well get up at 5.30am and check out the Tsukiji Fish Market.
It is the biggest wholesale fishmarket in the world and handles around 400 different types of seafood, some of which were completely unidentifiable to me.
What they hint at but cannot adequately convey in guide books is that you take your life into your hands when you step onto the market floor. There is a WorkCover ad just waiting to be made here. Forklifts whiz by at 15km/h while people hurl enormous frozen tuna towards unguarded bandsaws. It is off the charts. To give you some idea what I'm talking about:
Eventually, we realised that the way to manouever is just to set out and not really look at the forklifts but make sure they have seen you so they avoid you. This is what the locals seem to do.
The people working at the market regarded us with a mixture of tolerance and "What are these crazy gaijin doing here?"
All in all, an entirely crazy experience.
What are these things?
The eventual rubbish from the morning...
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