since we didnt sleep enough all week, we thought we would wake up at 3:45am on friday to go to the fish market and witness the fish market auction! we were in line by 4:25am and only one more group of two was admitted after us. crazy!
we hung out in a room for a bit (played cards) until they led us in two shifts (we were shift two) to witness the fish auction. it is kinda like an old school stock floor where people check out the inventory and then a guy stands up and rings a bell and then everyone puts up their hand and nods with bids (also kinda like storage wars, if you have seen that show). the fish were huge and were going for a lot of money (so we were told). the auction happens every morning. its insane they have a business around this.
after the fish auction we decided to eat some fresh sushi at one of the local sushi places in the fish market. once again i have documented my dishes to prove that i ate it all. dont ask me what it was - i am not sure i even want to know now, but it was good (for the most part). i ate all different types of fish, sea urchin, roe and of course, eel, again. we were not allowed to pick what we want, we were given whatever they had. also, they kept making it constantly, so you had to keep up! i only had to spit out part of one after i tried to get it down for quite awhile. it is disrespectful to take a bites of it, so you have to put the whole piece in your mouth and some included a LOT of fish.
in the market there were sushi shops, places to purchase fish and other little stalls of stores such as pottery, toys and veggies. i have included my favorite sign, "mostly made in japan, no china."
after the fish market we went back and caught a twenty minute nap and shower before we were off again to explore tokyo. this time we went to asakusa which is the old downtown part of tokyo. in asakusa there is a shopping area called nakamise where they have souvenirs and local treats (green tea ice cream!). i bought a japanese fan at the market.
at the end of the street there was the oldest temple in tokyo called sensoji. outside the temple you could put 100 yen, approximately 1 dollar in a box and then shake a canister to get your fortune number then you pulled your fortune out of a box on the wall. well i got the bad luck fortune. among other things it said: "your wishes will not come true." really uplifting, i know. one upside is that we could tie our fortunes onto this standing structure to get rid of our fortune. hopefully that is true.
we saw some amazing fashion at the market.
after the temple, we took a ferry to gardens in the city, which were beautiful. cherry blossoms and ponds and trees. serenity now.
instead of touring more that afternoon we decided to take a quick nap before our farewell party. at the farewell party (for the official trek) they showed a video montage the organizers had put together (will post after this post). we ate and drank and then experienced club life in tokyo. weird to have smoking in buildings again.
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