Konnichiwa Tokyo! : Day Two

And thus begins day two of my mis-adventures in Tokyo city.

First stop on the itinery was Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, otherwise, more commonly known as Tsukiji Fish Market (it being located at Tsukiji, very near the metro staions). To give the other shops credit, although the whole area is centralized around the fish market, there are a multitude of smaller stores surrounding the fish market, selling fruits, vegetables, foodstuffs....ARGH...FOOD!! AB-FAB!*drool*...The food (i.e. ramen, gyu-don, sushi...rice cakes) are all rather inexpensive compared to city prices and just taste wonderful. Anyway, we were gearing up for fresh sushi, so we had to bypass the tempting ramen and gyu-don(beef bowl) stalls. So off we went towards the main attraction : the Tsukiji Fish Market.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/galleries/tokyo/

This was an eye-opening experience. First of all, the one thing that struck me was the enormity of the entire complex. I've never seen such a big market in my life. I've seen the place on TV (Japan Hour) but nothing beats personal experience. All the different types of fish, and sea creatures on sale...it's really must-see-to-believe-it. We didn't explore too much, partly 'cos we were hungry (it was 9.30am and we haven't eaten breakfast); so we went to look for grub instead.

We were looking for this sushi stall; Dai-wa. Read up and saw on TV that this was the place to go for sushi. We also confirmed a presumption in a guidebook we read; Japanese people love eating cheap(or rather,reasonable) and good food and if you see a queue , you're not likely to go wrong.

And so right it was.

Dai-wa occupies 2 stalls and each stall can occupy up to 15 occupants at any one time. Naturally, someone must leave before any person can enter. Fortunately, we started queuing just as a large group of locals finished their meals, so we only had to queue for 15 minutes.

We sat down at our places and stared at the chef.

Transcipt:

Us : *stares at chef*

Chef : * stares at us*

Us : English?

Chef : No..no Engrish.

SHIT!fumble..mumble.

Us : Sushi?What sushi you got? wu menu boh? wa buay hiao gong jee-poon wei.

Chef : huh? li gong simi lan? (ok...he didn't say that. he just said "eh?" with a puzzled ezpression. And neither did we speak in Hokkien either.)

Luckily...he got the hint of our absolute ignorance and he offered "setto?" which we knew to mean "set"...and of course we ordered the set. We didn't know anything else.haha.

And how satisfying it was, even though we didn't really know what fish we were eating. The absolute freshness. The texture. UMPH! You can just feel each individual firmament of the fish's flesh..taut, juicy. Or as some of us may know..it's TOIT. And the freshness. I was eating this shrimp(raw) sushi. I just popped it into my mouth and pulled off the tail. When I placed the tail on the table, it was still twitching. (I'm so gonna burn in Hell.)

It was only a few days later that we knew what the heck we were eating, of which I will write in detail later.

Anyway..we finished up quickly and the bill came to about 3150yen per person. That's about..SGD45 .

Next stop, the Imperial Gardens. We decided to walk there, since it was pretty near. We'll also get to go through Ginza on our way there. Took a leisurely stroll and did some small snack-shopping on the way. We took about 2 hours to get to the gardens.

Then we went to buy the tickets for Day Three's adventure: Disneyland. After that, we went to Tokyo Station for shopping and dinner...And we fell in love with the Daimaru food supermarket. Oh...all the vibrant colors and smells of the bento sets..sushi..crackers...Foodie's heaven.

Anyway, we lingered around the area, shopping and eating and went back to our hotel at about 9pm.

Then I went for ramen again. And sausages.

And beer..peach beer.

mm-hmm...