The Fish Market

Today we rode the subway to the famous Tsukiji fish market. Even though we left the hotel on a non-peak time, the subway was very crowded. Since it was not rush hour, they didn't have to use the pushers (people who are paid to push people onto the subway to maximize the greatest number of people into the smallest amount of space). It is hard to believe that it could have been any more crowded, but Junko said that what we experienced was not too crowded! Tourists are no longer allowed to watch the fish auction, but we did get to visit the wholesale market. It was huge and contained any type of fish or shellfish that you could imagine. I will include a picture that I took of an octopus. After going through the market, Junko treated us to sushi. There were raw tuna, conger eel and fish roe sushi, along with egg cakes on one tray. The other tray had bite sized tuna, cucumber and plum sushi wrapped in seaweed along with a sort of fried tofu stuffed with rice roll. Some of us were more adventurous than others on trying the different items - thank you Kelly! We then went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum which was a history of the city of Tokyo from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It was a lovely museum. The picture of a kabuki actor was part of one of the exhibits. We took the subway again (much less crowded by this time) to the Tokyo Metropolitan government building observatory to get a 360 view of the city. It was a bit cloudy today so we could not see super far into the distance, but the wonderful variety of the architecture of what we could see was fabulous. By the way, Amy, we could see the Pfizer building very clearly. The observatory is on the 45th floor of the building at 660 feet. On the way back to the hotel, John, Lana, Kelly, Pat (a fellow traveler), and I stopped to explore a 100 Yen store (similar to a dollar store in the states). It was huge! There were 5 floors of "stuff". I picked up a few goodies for the grandkids and then we got back on the train. Kelly, who had researched the store and studied the map, did a wonderful job of getting us back to the hotel. There are so many exits from the train station, it would be easy to become confused and lost. We all did a bit of laundry in the hotel laundromat and then went out to dinner at a local restaurant called Jonathan's. There was no English menu, but there were pictures we could point at to order. We are in for the night, but will get up early to walk. Tomorrow the rest of the group (those who chose not to come on the pre-trip) will join us at breakfast.