A collection of thoughts and commentary on the end of Tsukiji and the move to Toyosu

A Few Days Before the Move

Tsukiji has become an internationally recognized brand, a brand associated with the highest quality fish in the world.  That is now gone.  Toyosu will never replace it, even if the fish is more or less the same.  But because of the contaminated ground around and under the new market, Toyosu will also make people question the safety of the fish.  Plus, the three syllables in the name is one more than in Tsukiji and one too many

Tsukiji was created out of nothing, and it took many years for it to achieve its current fame and notoriety.  But much of that was made possible by its location.  Tsukiji is just a few minute walk from Ginza, probably the most famous neighborhood in Japan for high-end everything (shopping, eating, gawking), as well as from Shinbashi, one of the busiest transit terminals in Tokyo.  It is also on the water, at the mouth of the Sumida River and at the upper end of Tokyo Bay.  Fishing boats were unloading their catch at the market up to the end.  And if you have some fishing gear and the time, you can catch fish in the water in front of the market (suzuki, or sea bass, is most sought after, but only for catch and release).

Toyosu, on the other hand, is isolated, alone in an otherwise empty wasteland of reclaimed land.  It is somewhat ironic that Tsukiji is also on reclaimed land (the name means the same).  To get there one must either take a long train and monorail trip, go by bus, or drive.  For people with time and energy, you can get there by bicycle as well (that will be me).  The nearest subway station, Toyosu, is served by only the Yurakuchō subway line, a line whose trains are already packed to the max every morning at rush hour.  The addition of more than 40,000 people a day going to the new market is going to create all kinds of problems.  Especially when people carry large bamboo baskets to the market and then return with them full of fish.

I have not been yet, but from what I have seen the new intermediate wholesale shops look like small prison cells.  Walls on the sides and in back, with a drop-down door in front.  No more talking to the people next door.

There will be air-conditioning.  But ice will still be needed.  Some people have been saying the fish will be safer with the air-conditioning, but I am not so sure.  Without it, people need to be careful to keep fish cooled by ice.  Will they continue to do the same when the air is cool in the summer?  And will there even be ice anymore?

Thursday, 12 October, 2018

I went down to Tsukiji around noon to have a look around.  There were a handful of TV and print journalists as well as quite a few TV cameras by the former main entry on Shinohashidori as well as a group associated with the move resistance chatting and passing out flyers, one in Japanese, one in English and Japanese.  A barrier had been erected across the main truck entryway with entry permitted only after checking in at a table and receiving a yellow pass.  Judging by the lineup of trucks, it looked like there was still a lot to move out.  I took a photo of the plaque on the nearby wall commemorating the 1954 nuke test near Bikini Atoll that exposed some Japanese fishing boats and their maguro to the radioactive fallout.  The original Hot Tuna!  I always thought the marker was interesting as it is only in Japanese.  Better to get a shot of it now as it will likely soon be gone, ground up with the rest of the rubble from the building it is attached to.

I went to the back gate, the one by the shrine where I always entered the market.  There were just a handful of people there, two people watching the entrance and trying to figure out how to lock the gate that, from the way things did not fit together, may have never before been shut.  The market used to be open 24/7 and was especially busy late at night when most other activities in the area had ended for the day.  A couple of foreign tourists were looking around.  I talked to a couple, apparently from Australia judging from their English, asking them if they were aware the market had closed for good.  They did not know it, and seemed quite disappointed.

Next I went into the retail fish market, the long hall that opened a couple of years ago where I usually buy fish by the piece of a whole fish is too big.  Especially buri.  On most days at noon the market would be full and bustling with a mix of tourists gawking and locals shopping.  Not today.  There were perhaps ten people shopping when I looked, and not many tourists.  It was nearly empty.  The whole large fish that used to be displayed on ice alongside smaller cuts of the same kind of fish were no longer on display.  Posters I had seen a week ago touting the Michelin starred restaurants in San Francisco that served fish from Tsukiji were gone, mostly replaced or covered up by notices saying the jōnai outer market was not moving to Toyosu but would remain open for business.  From the way things looked today, that might not be for very long.

Outside the scene was pretty much the same; a few cars parked in or driving down the main street, but no people, at least close to the shrine.  And no turetto, the scooter/carts that normally would be buzzing around the inside and outside of the market moving fish here and there.  They had already driven in one long parade over to Toyosu.  It was a bit more crowded closer to Shinohashi Dori, but not like it was before.  On most days at lunchtime, there would be a long queue waiting to get into Sushi Sei, my favorite sushi shop at the market.  Today there were just two young westerner men seated, and they were led in a few seconds later.  Other sushi shops looked mostly empty.  I noticed a few others had signs up saying they were taking the week off.  I chatted with a young couple from Germany who were enjoying some Japanese beer at a fairly new beer yatai (not Oktoberfest, but still fun!).  They said they were aware the main market had closed but wanted to see the outer market anyway.  And they liked it.

Tuesday, November 13.

This is the day I go to the new market.  We have been mostly out of fish at home.  No salmon, no mekajiki (swordfish), only maguro sashimi and kama (collar, or as my friends I get it from call it, maguro spare ribs), and that is almost gone.  So time for something besides chicken for dinner.  Monday night it looked like it might rain today, and it did early in the morning.  But when I woke up at 7:00 it had stopped.  So I gathered up my notes and maps showing my vendors new locations, put some ice packs in my Tsukiji basket, and hopped on my bicycle.

The ride only took about 20 or 25 minutes, compared to 7 or 8 to Tsukiji jōnai.  But when I arrived I was not sure where to go.  I found an entry gate where the outside guard man initially tried to wave me away.  When I said I was there to shop he directed to the person inside the office.  Once I showed him my basket and list of shops I said I had been shopping at for close to 10 years he waved me through.  But where to?

The area is huge, with buildings big and small scattered over an enormous area.  I parked my bike in the first place I found, then entered the fruits and vegetables building.  The building is perhaps 100 meters long and mostly open, with plenty of room for the turretto trucks and forklifts—FORKLIFTS!—to move around.  It did not take me long to find one of the shops I usually buy wasabi at, Tsukiji Kujiya.  I said hello and asked how to get to the fish area.  I was directed out of the building to an elevator that connected to a skywalk that led across a street to more buildings.  On the way, I passed three restaurants, a tempura shop that had not yet opened, a soba and udon place, and a sushi shop with two or three people waiting in line.  These were the only restaurants I saw.

After waiting to cross the street I finally found the fish area.  The first thing I noticed as I got close was the smell of fish, something I had never noticed at Tsukiji.  I asked a guard man where the entrance was and he pointed to a door on the first floor.  There was no problem getting in.  But then again, I did have my magic pass with me.

It took me a while to get my bearings, but eventually, I figured out where I was and where I needed to go.  The shop address system is similar to what was at Tsukiji, with numbers above the shops row by row.  Only before the numbers were easy to see.  The new ones are small and on the sides, not hung above the aisles.  And the aisles…  What can I say?  Some were impassable due to a turretto blocking the way.  Others were just packed with people and Styrofoam boxes.  The crossing aisles were wider, but filled with speeding turretto and parked neko hand carts.  At least there were plenty of restrooms and even designated smoking rooms.  Come to think of it, I did not see anyone smoking inside.

I ended up buying a nice katsuo and some iwashi from Hōkkaidō.  But at prices that I would not normally be willing to pay.  But after such a long break without, I thought it was worth it.  I also bought some salmon, an unsalted fillet of Norway salmon that weighed about 2 kg as well as some salted from my long-time seller.  Part of the unsalted will be for dinner tonight, the salted packed in miso and sake-kasu for later.  I forgot to buy mekajiki, but that gives me a reason to go back soon.

Overall, I think the produce section is an improvement over the Tsukiji space.  I had the feeling looking around that there are more shops and more product than before.  And there is also an automated loadout system where a forklift sets a pallet on some rollers, the driver enters a code, and the pallet disappears into a sorting mechanism that I assume sends it to a loading dock.  I noticed pallets of produce being lifted up to a second floor space where there also seemed to be offices.  There was also a test kitchen where I saw some sort of TV cooking show being filmed.

The fish section is another matter.  When I got home I read an article in today’s Japan Times about the unpleasant odors at the new market, just as I had noted as I first entered.  I can see how the new facility may be an improvement over Tsukiji for people that work there as it is newer and will supposedly be air conditioned in the summer, although getting there might be a problem for many people.  As a shopper, however, I found the new layout to be cramped in the aisles and visibility of the products being sold very poor, in part because the shops go back much deeper off the aisles than before but also because of the walls separating shops.  And it seems like there are a lot of accidents just waiting to happen.

Now that I am back home and finished taking care of my purchases (charring my katsuo on the gas burner to make katsuo tataki, taking the scales off the salted salmon before putting the pieces in my miso and sake-kasu mix to ferment, etc.), I feel good.  I am a bit tired as the bike ride is much longer than before, although on my return I went through Toyosu and then Kiba, a route I think is a bit faster.  But it is a good kind of tired.  And after a long absence, I once again have a cooler filled with fish.

Saturday, November 24.

While out for a bicycle ride around the city I decided to swing through Tsukiji, just to have a look at what was happening.  It was around noon, maybe 12:30, and I expected to see a lot of people, at least in the sushi restaurants.  But what I found was more like “what was not happening.”  There were empty seats at the counters of every sushi shop I looked into.  Normally, or at least in the past, there would be lines of people waiting to get in.  But not this day, which was the same as the last time.  The exception was Sushi Dai Honten, a small shop on Harumidori that in the past played second fiddle to the shop closer to the inner market.  There were four or five people waiting to be seated, all Japanese from what I could tell.

Other than that, there just were not many people there.  The people I did see were predominantly Japanese, most there to shop.  I saw and heard quite a few Chinese (“quite a few” is relative to how many people were there at the time) and a handful of “hakujin” from who knows where (the US, Australia, Europe, or wherever).

All in all the scene seems quite sad.  I wonder how long the tourist-dependent shops will be able to hang on, or when the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the owner of the land the market was on and, as I recall, the land in the outer market area as well, will need to step in with a bailout.

March 6, 2019

Toyosu was closed today so I went to Tsukiji to buy some fish for dinner.  But not until after forgetting the market was closed and riding out there anyway.  Oh well.  I need the exercise.   The fish sellers in the “official” Tsukiji buildings, the halls operated by the Tokyo City Government, were closed as well, but most of the individual shops in the outer market were open.  But just as it was when I was there a week earlier to buy some konbu, there were not many people shopping.  The people that were there were mostly foreign tourists, some of whom did buy snacks to eat there.  But most seemed to just take photos.  “Garagara” is the term the shop owners seem to use most frequently to describe the desolation these days.  I did notice a lot of coffee shops, including several that seemed to be newly opened.  And it looks like some new business-type hotels are going up.  And I spotted a brand new coin laundry.  It looked pretty spiffy.  I imagine it and the new hotels are there for the Olympics.

March 12, 2019

Back to Toyosu, and no worry about it being closed as today is a Tuesday.  Since the market moved we seem to be eating a lot more chicken than fish, although I guess we do the same every winter when we eat nabe.  I didn’t need much today, just some salmon and frozen me-ka (me-kajiki).  I think I am getting smarter, or at least today I am: I bought double the amount I used to buy.  And once again there was no problem entering.  I just ride my bicycle past the guards then park it in the bike parking area and walk on in.  Maybe they know me now.

Walking around inside the market I got the sense that for the people working there Toyosu is an improvement over Tsukiji.  There are washrooms throughout the floor, and toilets as well.  The temperature control still needs to be figured out as some areas are much colder than others, but at least there are no rats to dodge.  But the biggest improvement is probably that there are no tourists clogging the aisles and generally getting in the way.  I did spot a couple of what looked to be Chinese tourists with backpacks that were in the way.  But that was about it, at least today.  I still need to learn my way around better, although wandering while searching is kind of fun.  And I never know what I will find.

I need to go back next week to shop for hanami.  As usual, I will probably buy katsuo for our annual “big” Hamachō Park hanami party.  Big as in maybe 50 people, the first showing up at 5:30 in the morning.

March 22.

Back to Toyosu once again, the third time in just over a week.  I think the ride is getting easier.  I knew exactly where I needed to go so it was a quick trip.  Plus, I needed to be home in time to go do other work.  What made this visit remarkable was that I saw three groups of non-Japanese people on what seemed to be guided tours of the inner market.  They were small groups, maybe four or five people plus a guide.  But they were almost definitely tours, something I did not know was being allowed.  My first thought was that the market is sponsoring the tours as a way to attract more visitors and thus business for the retail shops.  I will have to investigate more.