Sushi for breakfast

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After arriving back from Hiroshima, I spent the final 4 days of my time in Japan in Tokyo. We decided to get up really early one morning to go and check out the Tokyo fish market as we'd heard from other people staying at our hostel that it was really worth seeing and it has a reputation for having some of the best and freshest sushi in the world in the little restaurants that surround the main market place. So, at about 6am one morning we arrived in Tsukiji in the south of Tokyo where the market is held, the place was absolutely huge and after nearly getting run over by an army of turbo-charged forklift trucks, we managed to see the last 15mins of the tuna auction where a big group of people were fighting over some of the biggest fish ive ever seen which was funny to see. It was amazing to walk around the market and see the fish being cut up with samurai swords and angle grinders before being in small enough chunks to sell after only having been caught a few hours beforehand. Next, we went to find a good sushi bar on the outskirts of the market. We found a nice looking one and went inside and ordered a couple of different types of sushi each from the friendly chap behind the counter. This was the first time I'd tried sushi and it was nicer than I was expecting it to be although it was probably too early in the morning for it as it was only 7am!

We learnt that there was one of the big sumo tournaments starting in Tokyo in the last few days that we were there, so we decided to grab ourselves a couple of the cheap general admission tickets for one of the days. Each tournament day is broken up into two sessions; a morning session and an afternoon session with the rank of the fighters increasing throughout the day. As we arrived for the morning session it was quite empty so we managed to sit in the ring-side seats which are usually extremely expensive. We got a good view from these seats (although I'm not sure that a close up view of a fat man's backside could really be called a 'good view') and it was fun to watch the matches and the ceremonial parts in between each fight. However, when we came back for the afternoon session, we were in much worse seats as the place was now packed out and it all started to get a bit samey. I'm glad we went to see it but I don't think I'd go again. It was a good job we'd moved from the ring-side seats though because the top-level fighters kept falling on the people who were sitting in them!

On the day before we left Japan, at about 7am just outside our hostel, some drummers started banging their drums really loud and woke everyone up. Turns out that on that day there was a festival on in the area we were staying at. From what it I could tell, the festival celebrations involved all the locals dressed up in robes carrying a big box/shrine around all day, they started carrying it around at about 8am and they were still doing it at 8pm, they were also chanting something really loud as they carried it. At about 9pm they put the box down just around the corner from our hostel and then a massive street party started which was really fun and everyone in the area joined in with the celebrations including us and all the people from our hostel. I'm still not entirely sure what that festival was celebrating, but it was great to see it and talk to a few of the local people too.

I've been meaning to write this for ages but I've only just got round it, I'm in Vietnam at the moment and it's harder to find the time and places to get on the internet for longer than a few minutes at a time. I'll hopefully find time to write a Vietnam blog in the next week or so, bye for now!

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Photos

Fish Carving
A tuna is carefully cut with a sword at the Tsukiji fish market

Sumo
Two Sumo wrestlers prepare to fight each other

Festival Celebrations
The celebrations that started early in the morning continue on into the night