Tsukiji Fish Market
The start of my last full day in Japan came early. Really early. Sickeningly early. As in, I got up at 3am. Why in the world would I do such a thing? Well, I had to catch a cab by 3:45 to Tsukiji 4-chome to meet up with Mr. Naoto Nakamura and Mr. Eizaburo Yoshino, who give guided tours of the famous Tsukiji fish market and auctions three days a week.
Both of these gentlemen speak very good English and both used to work in the industry. They’re familiar with the markets and have friends who still work there, so they’re able to guide you around behind the scenes to see the preparation for the auctions for some of the best seafood in the world. The only rub is, the auctions start early, so if you want to see the preparation beforehand, you have to get there by about 4am. It’s worth it. Just plan on a nap later in the day.
I won’t try to relay all the interesting stuff we saw, but here are some highlights.
Tuna are huge fish. Really, really big. They are sold fresh and also frozen. Sometimes, frozen is not so great — the fish may be years old even — but sometimes it means that it’s a recently-caught variety that has arrived from elsewhere in the world and is otherwise not available in Japan. Properly defrosted, this fish can be excellent and can command big money.
The auction starts with the biggest and highest-quality fish, and then sort of works its way down. In the hours around 4am (and earlier!) they go through and sort the fish by size and quality, then mark each with a number, starting with 01. The 01 fish will bring the most money. With fresh tuna, it can go for $60,000. Note: dollars, not yen!
During this time, the “middlemen” as our guides called them are walking along the rows of fish and inspecting them for quality. These are the folks who will be buying these whole fish and then preparing them and selling the meat to restaurants and other professional establishments, so they are taking notes on which fish they want to buy. Our guides pointed out a particular gentleman (left) who has been in the business for over 30 years, and told us to remember him, since we would stop by his stall at the end of our tour to watch him butchering the fish that he bought at auction.
A different sort of preparation happens for the frozen tuna. In a room that looked like it might well have inspired the egg room scene in the first Alien movie, the frozen fish are laid out in neat rows with an eerie fog shrouding them as their cold interacts with the humid air. Workers with long and very sharp knives make cuts at the tail of the fish while others come by with hot water to thaw the cut area. This allows the middlemen to do their inspection of the meat quality. But, we were told, this is a riskier business than fresh tuna, because it’s harder to know the quality that you will really get when the fish is fully thawed. Perhaps it won’t have as much fatty flesh in the belly (the toro for sushi fans) that brings the premium price.They really frown on flash photography in here, and there are signs everyplace. Why? I think because these guys are working with really dangerous tools. It’s probably a good thing not to piss off a bunch of guys working at 4am with 2-1/2 foot knives, so I relied on the IS lens on the 20D for all my photos (worth its weight in gold that lens — nearly all of these shots were between 1/20 and 1/6 second and would have been impossible without it or a much larger lens with a faster aperture). My tour companion’s point-and-shoot camera had one of those flashes that keeps turning on again when you turn the camera on, and she accidentally took a shot with flash, which got an unhappy response from one fellow. This is where it’s great to have guides, who smoothed it over immediately.
Anyhow, as well as the tuna, there is of course every other kind of seafood from shrimp to urchin to crab and lobster to oysters (just going out of season). Much of it is sold live, and there was a whole huge area of tanks with live fish and shellfish, and then an area where some of the live fish are killed just before (or after?) being sold. It’s not a pretty process, but it does seem to be very quick and about as humane as you could ask for.All along, they have bells that ring for the different auctions. This is the other place where flash
photography is forbidden, since all bidding is done with hand signals and a signal could be missed with flashes. Some of the auctions happen in a sort of auction area (of which there are several) with bleachers and a podium where people bid. The fresh tuna auction, though, happens on the move up and down the floor of the big room where all the fish were laid out. The auctioneer walks along and does his calls as the bidders walk along with him, giving their hand signals. As each fish is sold, other workers tag the winning bid onto the fish and the auctioneer really never stops.
photography is forbidden, since all bidding is done with hand signals and a signal could be missed with flashes. Some of the auctions happen in a sort of auction area (of which there are several) with bleachers and a podium where people bid. The fresh tuna auction, though, happens on the move up and down the floor of the big room where all the fish were laid out. The auctioneer walks along and does his calls as the bidders walk along with him, giving their hand signals. As each fish is sold, other workers tag the winning bid onto the fish and the auctioneer really never stops.At the end of our tour, we went back into the areas where the middlemen have their stalls and prepare the seafood that they purchased to be sold to the commercial customers. This is where we were able to see the one gentleman and his staff butcher about four of the giant tuna. Imagine for a second. Each of these fish cost somewhere between $20,000 and $60,000. That’s a lot of operating capital!
The process of butchering these fish is hard work that requires strength and finesse. He uses three basic tools: a 2-1/2 foot saw to remove the head; a 2-1/2 foot knife to make the primary incisions that demarcate the pieces he will remove; and, a 6-foot knife (yes, really!) with which they remove the giant sections. That last bit is a 3-man job. The middleman and his helper wield the 6-foot knife while a third man stabilizes the cut piece and then brings in a plank to carry it away. The pieces left over after they take the major sections (for example, the spine and bones) are then carefully worked on to make sure that they don’t waste precious meat. I shot this movie at left with the S400, but re-encoded as H.264 to make it a tolerable size. It’s still 7MB, but that’s down from 20! It shows the process starting from just after the saw was used.
With that, our tour was complete, and my gracious guides escorted me to my second destination of this very early morning: Daiwa Sushi.
Tuesday, May 2, 2006