The world is full of great seafood markets - Pike Place in
Seattle, the Pescheria in Venice, Fulton in New York City, Pyrmont
in Sydney - and I mean them no disservice by saying that each pales
before Tsukiji (pronounced "tsu-ki-gee"). Built in 1935, it's a
temple of frutti di mare to which legions of chefs,
foodies, and curiosity seekers have gravitated despite the fact
that the market makes absolutely no attempt to be
tourist-friendly. There are few banners, no brochures, no
postcards. As the epicenter of Tokyo's dining industry, Tsukiji
mostly serves the locals, not tour groups, and the boisterous are
no more welcome here than they would be at the Vatican during
Easter Mass.
None of which diminishes the steady stream of camera-toting but
respectful pilgrims who flock to Tsukiji year-round. Abutting the
seafood mecca is an outer market where visitors could easily spend
entire afternoons in shops devoted to tea and seaweed, dumplings,
the omelet-like tamagoyaki, knives, and fish scales. But
really, who comes all this way to study fish scales?
Tsukiji surprises both for what it is and for what it isn't. A
thoroughly unprepossessing spectacle, the market's structure -
hardly as picturesque as that of Venice's - is really a complex of
glorified sheds housing some 830 stalls. The rows are narrow and
cramped; to the uninitiated who can't read the Japanese markers,
the layout virtually guarantees that you'll get lost, at least
momentarily. At the same time, it's clean, odorless, and (typical
for Japan) almost monastically quiet. Above all, Tsukiji is
vast.
Hundreds of millions of kilos of seafood are sold here annually,
dwarfing its biggest North American counterpart, Fulton. Japan
being a series of islands, the Tsukiji Fish Market represents its
vital daily harvest.
The first time I visited Tsukiji, as a landlocked Texas lad living
in Tokyo during most of 1986, I didn't know anything about seafood,
less still about cooking it. That day, crazed from the Jurassic
Park-like experience of witnessing alien beings, I bought
gigantic prawns with wild stripes and oysters the size of a baby's
head, and in the kitchen I treated these strange and ultrafresh
ingredients with surgical care. Later, I ventured into the world of
fish, coming away with cousins of snapper and sea bass. Tsukiji
made me fall in love with cooking. Here I learned that a bland term
like clam or shrimp encompasses dozens of
delicacies, each with its own flavor and texture. Here I learned
that there is a big banquet out there, that my local grocery store
hardly circumscribes it, and that in culinary affairs, adventure is
its own reward. As a people, the team-spirit Japanese hardly rebel
against conformity. And so it's ironic that Japan harbors one of
the world's great monuments to cultural heterogeneity - and that it
was on trips to Tsukiji that this American boy learned how to take
risks with the altogether unfamiliar.
Along the way, I fell out of fear with the at-times esoteric
cuisine of Japan. During my early morning jaunts to Tsukiji, I
discovered shijimi, the tiny clams that give depth to miso
soup, as well as the dried shards of bonito used for
stock. I learned that the unsightly black kelp is a delicacy worthy
of gift boxes - though I still stayed away from the stuff. And
while I never cooked with eel, the constant sight of it splayed out
in the stalls of Tsukiji helped me lose my squeamishness, and
eventually I became a serious fan.
Though the market is primarily intended as a wholesale outlet, I
found that my money was as good as any Ginza sushi chef's. As long
as I understood that this was a place of commerce and not
Seafood for Gaijin Dummies, every vendor endured my
grunt-and-point technique and sold me what I wanted. For days after
each trip to Tsukiji, my dreams would be flooded with the market's
otherworldly images: jiggling bowls of bright-orange salmon eggs, a
million flounder eyes considering me with unblinking perplexity. I
left Japan in 1986 hooked on Tsukiji, and suspecting that my
childlike infatuation with its offerings wouldn't recede with age,
I was certain that I would be back one day, ready to gawk
again.
AND SO THE GAWKER RETURNS.
Like any market, Tsukiji offers what's in season. Springtime brings
boatloads of shark. In the summer, Tsukiji teems with swordfish and
whale. When I reappeared in Tokyo this past October, the bluefin
tuna were ubiquitous, caught from the Sea of Japan on fishing
lines.
Tuna is always king at Tsukiji, its flesh prized and fussed over
like no other. Freshly auctioned-off rows of bluefins lay in the
sheds, bearing yellow tags with the fish's origin and its new owner
notated. On long butchering tables, the vendors hack away at the
tuna hides to get to the juiciest flesh. Standing nearby, the
customers squint hard at the dark-red tuna meat, cutting off small
slices from the toro, or belly, to judge its
tenderness.
What staggers me as I zigzag through the stalls are the sizes and
colors, none of which match the American experiences. Seething
red-ark clams. Korean scallops the size of a child's fist. Nearly
microscopic shrimp. I look into a tub of sawdust and see a dozen
Shanghai crabs fidgeting inside. Flashing from the rows like rare
coins are particular spectacles, like the brilliant silver and
aptly named cutlass fish, and the brassy fillets of stingray. The
Japanese are masters at beautification, as the merchants of Tsukiji
demonstrate. In neat Styrofoam boxes, God's ugliest creatures,
squid, glisten in silky uniformity. The only unredeemable sights
are the trays filled with squirming tangles of eels - which the
purveyor reaches into like he's scooping up a handful of rubber
bands.
Words fail for some of these critters. There's a humpbacked fish
streaked with psychedelic red - disappointingly named
mebaru, or black rockfish. The half-pink, half-yellow fish
I see on my rounds goes by itoyori, or golden threadfin
bream. Whatever. I ask one of the vendors, a lean and well-wrinkled
fellow, if he's seen anything new come out of the water
recently.
"Once in a while," he says, "a little brighter in color. Or bigger
than usual." Smiling, he adds, "I've been here over 30 years."
We're in Japan, but of course this is a marketplace, and the ocean
has many scavengers. Thus I walk by a beautiful presentation of red
Hokkaido shrimp alongside crustaceans from Russia, Iceland, China,
New Zealand, Argentina, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Saudi Arabia. I
ask a vendor where he thinks the best tuna comes from. "Mexico," he
tells me.
I could do this for hours. But by this point, you're wondering:
Is that all there is to Tsukiji - gazing at
gills? Hardly. For if you're here as a tourist, a visit to the
market is mere preamble, a warm-up to the main event, which is …
sushi for breakfast, of course!
You cringe. You shouldn't. In truth, nothing is easier on the
system, no eye-opener more gentle than the world's freshest
seafood. On this trip, I wander over to the edge of the market
where, midway down the alley of Building Six, a half-dozen
customers stand in a line beside a door bearing a small orange
flag. This is Daiwa Sushi, and it's not unknown, with good reason.
(A couple of doors down stands an identical sliding door, this one
obscured by a green flag, with a similar line: Sushi Dai, itself
deservedly famous.) The line moves fast. A dowdy waitress slides
open the small door, whisks a customer or two in, then slides the
door closed again. Ten minutes later, I'm in.
Daiwa actually has two sushi counters partitioned off by a wall.
One side is run by the father, the other by his son. This morning,
I've got a bar stool on the dad's side. Though he's been making
sushi at this very spot for nearly half a century, his skin is
impossibly smooth, like the tuna belly he's cutting up. The other
nine customers range from tourists to salarymen to market vendors.
A couple of them are slurping Kirin beers, though it's not yet nine
in the morning. I stick with the deep-green tea and the marvelously
rich miso soup with the tiny clams rattling around in the bottom of
the bowl. I ask the shiny-faced sushi chef for the Chef's Special,
which costs about $30. He nods and slaps down a piece of toro. I
ask him where the tuna is from.
"Boston," he grins.
There are no adornments to Daiwa, and the father and his assistant
are too busy with their labors to offer cheap sideshows. All that
matters is the meal, which is epic. My toro is followed by squid.
Then tiger prawn. Then a roll of Russian sea urchin. Another tuna
belly, slightly less fleshy, from the Indian Ocean. Six dozen
pieces of tuna and salmon roe rolls. Snapper. The chef then reaches
over the counter and hands me a small broiled shrimp head. It
bursts in my mouth like candy. After that, a conga eel and a sweet
omelet roll.
Before long, I'm lumbering out through the kitchen. It's a gray
Tokyo morning, the kind that masks the time of day, and my body is
both half defeated by jet lag and half exultant from the infusion
of protein and omega-3 fatty acids. I decide to do another lap -
see what the squids and the octopi are up to. When I finally close
my eyes back at the hotel, I'll see those tentacles fanning about
beneath my eyelids - waving to me, knowing I'm not going away for
good.
Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market is a treat for
the eyes and the belly-no matter what the hour.
IT'S BEST TO VISIT IN A DREAM STATE. VERY EARLY, THAT IS TO SAY,
AND PREFERABLY AFTER HAVING FLOWN IN THE EVENING BEFORE, WHEN YOUR
BODY IS INVOLUNTARILY TWITCHING AND YOUR HEAD IS SWAMPY WITH
CONFUSION AND YOU'VE SPENT THE NIGHT THRASHING BENEATH THE
BEDSHEETS…UNTIL THERE'S NO DENYING IT: YOU'RE AWAKE IN TOKYO, AND
YOU MIGHT AS WELL TAKE YOUR PLACE AMONG THE NIGHTCLUB DENIZENS AND
DROWSY SALARYMEN ON THAT FIVE A.M. METRO AND SEIZE THE DAY THAT HAS
YET TO ARRIVE.
THIS IS APPARENT AS YOU ARRIVE ON THE PERIPHERY, SUDDENLY SWARMED
BY DOZENS OF MEN ON BUZZING FORKLIFTS AND MOUNTAINS OF DISCARDED
STYROFOAM CONTAINERS. YOU SHUFFLE PAST THEM AND INTO A
CLOISTER-LIKE WAREHOUSE. AND IN YOUR DREAM STATE, WHAT YOUR EYES
TAKE IN BARELY REGISTERS AS REALITY. YOU'RE STANDING ON THE FLOOR
OF A DRAINED OCEAN, SURROUNDED BY ACRES UPON ACRES OF AQUATIC LIFE
FORMS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE. FINS AND TENTACLES AND SHELLS AND
EGGS OF NAMELESS DENOMINATION, ALL UNDER DIM LAMPLIGHT.
STEP FORWARD, AND YOU HAVE LEFT BEHIND TOKYO'S 12 MILLION
INHABITANTS. NOW YOU ARE IN TSUKIJI, AND YOU SLEEPWALK WITH THE
FISHES.