Visiting The Famous Tuna Auction

Tsukiji Market, Tokyo, Japan

After watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi I've been dreaming of sushi too. The original market was featured in the documentary where Jiro, master sushi chef, goes daily to find the freshest fish to make his omakase of the day.
So during my trip to Tokyo I had to visit Tsukiji Market. Tours start at 6am so we stayed up all night and left shinjuku around 4am. We took an uber since subways weren't open yet and arrived around 4:30am. It took a while to find the tour, but we made it just in time and got put in the 2nd tour showing of the day. Be prepared to wait, once they give you a number you can't leave, so bring a drink or some breakfast so you don't get too hungry.

Before we got into the auction we were able to see an entire tuna being pulled into a truck! I was shocked at how large they were. I'm only used to the tiny slices of red meat on my plate, I had no idea they were almost bigger than people.

In the auction, there were lines of lines of frozen bluefin tuna, with samples for buyers to feel the meat. The auctioneer quickly lists off the fish, with buyers silently signaling their prices with a flick of a finger. Each tuna only took a couple of seconds before the next fish was up. In a matter of minutes two rows of tuna had been auctioned and sold. hundreds of thousands of dollars, just like that.

We forgot to bring breakfast, so by the time the auction was over we were STARVING. All the sushi teasing had me craving some sashimi. We got some irresistible uni, and toro. I'm drooling just looking at these photos again.

sooo creamyyyyyyy

We also tried some raw crab (my first!), made in korean style with extra red and hot spices.

After sampling market sushi we went to two other shops. I forgot to take photos there but I did get a shot of a Tamago sushi we had! (Trust me though, everything was delicious.)