At 5am we went to the Tsukiji fish market. Every morning hundreds of tuna are auctioned off here. I ended up in a fierce bidding war for one of these frozen behemoths. lt started out as a gag but somehow I kind of got caught up in all the excitement and ended up buying the damn thing. They're expensive, these fish. Mine cost ￥2,489,000. I nick-named it Herbert.
Herbert was too big for us to carry and now that I had spent all my money, I knew there was no way I could afford to pay the excess baggage charges to get it home. Derrick had to loan me the money to buy a saw so we could cut it into small enough pieces to carry. He stayed with the bulk of the tuna stash while Chikako and I went around to all the sushi restaurants. She did the talking and I did the carrying. We managed to sell most of it, enough to recoup my costs anyway. I was left with about 20 pounds of frozen tuna which is now in the mini-fridge back at the hotel. I hope to God it doesn't thaw during the flight.
Adjacent to the auction floor is the largest fish market in the world where all manner of truly bizarre creatures are for sale. I'd learned my lesson with the tuna though, and managed to escape with only a small bag of dried minnows.
Afterwards, we went to a nearby sushi bar where we had a tasty breakfast of sea urchin, eel, and sake. All in all, a fantastic start to the day.
Oh, btw, this isn't entirely true. I didn't actually buy a tuna. I lied. Sorry.
But I did buy a little bag of dried minnows.