Tokyo Fishmarket
I had a lie-in when Sue and Andy went to the fishmarket, and heard all about it when they came back to get their stuff for the rest of the day. It was very dark inside, and Andy tried to capture the effect in a picture looking like a Japanese manga for his friends on the gn15 list. I thought it looked rather nice, so I asked him to do all the photographs on this page. I sat and watched him: it took him ages, but he says it captures the effect quite well. (I wondered about having him do the last set of Tokyo tram pictures the same way but he told me not to push my luck.)
Above, you can see the auctioneers. Apart from offloading the boats, this is the first stage of the process at the market. Sue’s guidebook said that you can’t get into the actual auctions, but Andy said that it was just like the old open outcry market at the Futures Exchange in London, so he had no problem understanding what was happening and just sort of fitted in un-noticed. The man standing on the box is the auctioneer. He does a lot of shouting so every so often he gets a drink from the kettle. The man behind him is recording the deals. Once they’re on the sheet they’re binding, which is why the man nearest the camera, who has a trading badge, is bidding on behalf of the other man in the shot. The trading badge allows you to make a deal on a handshake, and settle up at the end.
What they're bidding for are these: row upon row of Tuna, quite a lot of which will probably be on restaurant tables by lunchtime. If you look carefully, you’ll see that Andy has given one of the badged floor-traders a red outfit: most of the other people in this shot are checking the fish so that they can make a list for someone else to bid for on their behalf. There are at least three auction halls, and the pace is such that all this lot will be gone in about half an hour. There’s a complicated system of stickers that record who sold what to whom, so the fish can be taken away immediately after the deal is struck.
This is less than fifteen minutes after the fish were sold. A batch of Tuna - they're frozen on the boats - were loaded onto this truck and taken a few rooms further down, and sliced on a special bandsaw. The slices are loaded back on to be delivered to one or more specialist preparation places a little further on from the auction rooms. The little trucks are everywhere and although at first sight everything looks chaotic, it's very well organised so that the fish is transported as quickly as possible. There's no point in paying top yen for a good tuna if it's not still absolutely fresh when it hits the sushi bench.
Above, wholesalers, are picking up boxes of partly prepared fish with some people hanging around a little food and drink kiosk that acts as a meeting point for drivers. But the market doesn't only serve wholesalers who will finish the fish: some of the fish goes another stage to be packaged for retail. On the right are retail packages on display for restaurateurs and independent grocers to pick for sale today, and even for individuals to buy for lunch. If Andy was in his element with the little trucks, I can only imagine what he made of acres of boxes being moved hither and thither.
Actually I can more than imagine it. I’ve seen him like this before. He took hundreds and hundreds of shots of the boxes on the trolley wagons and was full of ideas about models. He says that it was probably the second best visit after the Enoden trip so possibly it's just as well that I didn't see how embarrassingly bubbly he was when they stopped off for sushi and beer at one of the tiny fishmarket restaurants on the way back.