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Daily Journal
Thursday, November 16, 2000 The alarm went off at 4:00 AM. I rolled out of bed, tried to pull myself together, and headed down to the lobby to meet five other crazy people for a taxi ride to Tsukiji, the Tokyo fish market. Let me start by giving you some interesting facts. This fish market sells 400 different types of seafood that is imported from 60 different countries. There are five million pounds of fish sold each day. Tsukiji is like a village in itself. There are 60,000 workers and 32,000 vehicles that travel in and around the market. That is the first thing that hits you when you get out of the cab. We were warned: be careful you don't get run over! There are fork-lifts, trucks, vans, motorcycles, bikes, and handcarts. But the vehicle that seemed to want to mow us down was the "ta-ray", a three wheeled gas powered wagon that whizzed by me with every step I took. The market is about the size of a large university football stadium and I think we walked half of it. As we walked through the rows of booths, we passed varieties of fish that I didn't even know existed. Many were extremely gross to look at.   Somehow
we found our way to the tuna auction, which I had seen photos of. But seeing
it in person was unbelievable. There were rows and rows of those poor dead
fish, just lying there waiting to be taken home and made into sushi. There
were 2 sections, the frozen food section-
 frozen tuna, (that's how they are brought in from the fishing boats,) and the unfrozen variety. Prior to the auction, the buyers walk through the aisles in their big rubber boots, examining the merchandise. Each man carries a flashlight and a hook. The hooks are used to open up various orifices on the fish and then looked into with the aid of the flashlight. The auction began. My friends and I decided to adopt an unfrozen fish.  Fish #8 was his proper name, but he was Charlie the Tuna to us. A man bid on Charlie and before we knew it, he was loaded on one of those hand trucks with another friend. The man must have thought we were nuts, but the six of us followed him, the fish, and the handcart as he maneuvered to what seemed like the other end of the market to his stall, where he would prepare Charlie for his afterlife. The man gave Charlie a bath, cut off some inedible portions, and proceeded to quarter him. He used a huge knife and at one point needed a second worker to help him make his cuts carefully.  As Charlie was put into the freezer to await his further demise into sushi size pieces, we bid him goodbye.  Out on the street, we decided to try our luck at the Tokyo subway system. We made that decision only after a very kind gentleman standing on the corner told us that he was on his way to the Ginza station and that we could walk with him. He would even show us how to buy our tickets and where to get off.  � What luck! The six of us returned to the hotel at 7:00 AM, very pleased with ourselves. The Fulbright program for the day was three lectures on the Japanese educational system, the Japanese economy, and the Japanese government. I was amazed at how forthright the speakers were in addressing both the strengths and the weaknesses of these areas. It was extremely interesting to hear that Japan is trying to get their educational system to be more like the US system, while US is trying to get to be more like the Japanese system. For example, by 2002, Japan is moving to a 5 day school week from the 6 day week currently in practice. Their new goals are to give children "room to grow" and a "zest for living". Japanese children today are so stressed out by preparing for entrance exams to high school that they don't have time to be children. The government is working hard to change this. One of the speakers pointed out that the current prime minister's name, Mr. Mori, translates to "forest". Our maybe-president's name is Bush. (By the time you read this, maybe we'll know!) As if the day wasn't long enough, I decided to join a group that was going kimono shopping. So at 4:30 again (PM this time), I met my crazy friends again in the lobby for a subway ride to the Harajuku area of Tokyo. We were now experts at using the subway, so we had no problem until we walked out of the station and couldn't figure out which street to walk down. Okay, so it took us 45 minutes to find a store that was 10 minutes away. We did get there before it closed and I bought two used kimonos, one for the classroom and one for my daughter. The kimonos and the sash that you wear around it, the "obi", only cost 5000 yen! (Do you know how much that is in dollars?) We returned to the hotel area for a shabu, shabu dinner. For the first time in a long time, I slept more than four hours. Thanks for being patient with me. I am getting caught up and will try to get these posted in a more timely matter. Dewa mata! (see you later) Rosen San |
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