Our internal clocks woke us up at 2:00 am, and we were ready to go to the subway station at 4:00 am. But Aunt Kyoko caught us at the door, and explained the first subway did not run until 5:00 am. We had hoped to make it to the opening bell of the wholesale auction at the Fish Market at 5:00 am, but the subway schedule foiled that! The crows were cawing loudly as we waited one more hour.
Poor Aunt Kyoko was up the second time we left, too!
We walked down and then up the narrow residential street to the subway station a few short blocks away. The station was open, but apparently the ticket machines weren’t turned on. We tried to get ourselves Metro cards, but the machines didn’t work until the subway employee entered his office. We had several designs and denominations to choose from for our Metro cards. We chose 1000 yen denominations.
We found the proper platform, and boarded the 5:00 am train! It was about a 30-minute ride from our home station of Kotake-mukaihara to Shintomi-cho. At that station we took the Shinohashi-dori exit, and walked along the avenue in the Tsukiji area of Tokyo.
Tsukiji and Shimbashi
In the Great Fire of 1657, two days of flames leveled 70% of Ieyasu Tokugawa’s capital of Edo, killing 10,000 people. Instead of being discouraged, the Shogun took the opportunity to plan and build a bigger city incorporating the surrounding marshes.
Tsukiji means reclaimed land. The common people did not benefit from this block of land which had been drained and filled. The land was first allotted to feudal lords and temples.
In 1853, when Japan opened its doors to the outside world, Tsukiji became Tokyo’s first foreign settlement.
The area to the north, Shimbashi, was a network of canals and waterways during the Edo-period. It was the height of luxury to charter covered boats called yakata-bune, and to cruise the river with a local restaurant providing catering, and a geisha house providing companionship. After 1868, the geisha moved indoors and the area became a sophisticated pleasure quarter. A dwindling number of geisha still entertain at some 30 ryotei, or traditional restaurants, tucked away in the back streets.
Tsukiji Fish Market
We passed a row of shops (did they have corrugated tin roofs like the guide-book said?) with a covered sidewalk. Shops selling all types of goods including vegetables, clothing, shoes, ceramics, noodles, and coffee. At the next corner we turned left. At the end of the street was a blue-painted iron arch bridge leading to the Tokyo Chuo Oroshiuri Ichiba, Tokyo’s Central Wholesale Market.
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| A handcart approaches the blue iron bridge to the market |
It is said to be Tokyo’s greatest ongoing open-air spectacle, especially the fish market auction. We knew we had missed the start of the auction, but apparently at 5:40, we had missed it all.
The market itself was a sight to see, and we did our best to stay out of the way of crowds of men either driving diesel carts with a hula hoop steering wheel directly around the engine itself, or pulling hand carts. There were cases of seafood stacked high, but they were being quickly delivered to rows and rows of wholesalers all under one roof.
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| This is a WIDE aisle in the market; note the motorized cart on the right |
The wholesalers were preparing the seafood for sale to retailers, and a few local buyers were inspecting the catch. There was such a variety, and there was no way we could identify all we saw. There were hundreds of types of fish and shellfish, most of it fresh (that means alive!).
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| Sea urchins front left |
There were big frozen tuna minus head and tail, being dragged by huge hooks, scraped by yard long scrapers, and cut with electric saws.
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| Slicing frozen tuna |
We saw refrigerator-size blocks of ice being delivered as well as plastic bins of ice cubes and crushed ice. Dry ice was also being used. We saw cases of live fish and eels splashing water.
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| Squid and eels |
Cases of neat rows of squid of several types, shrimp of all sizes. Crates of crabs scallops, clams, mussels, limpets, and abalone. Lobster, octopus, cuttlefish. Bright orange carp, herring, flounder. There were also all types of dried fish, and some pickled fish.
The fish market is not meant to be a tourist attraction, but there were several gaijin, or foreigners. We managed to keep our feet dry despite splashing fish and people hosing down the floors. All the employees wore rubber boots!
Sidebar:
The Tsukiji Fish Market did not smell fishy. It just smelled of cigarette smoke and diesel fumes!
We left the fish market, crossing the blue arch bridge. On the other side was the Namiyoke-Jinju, a Shinto shrine dedicated to the safety of seamen. It had several smaller shrines with offerings of coins, a glass of water, cases of Asahi beer, and baskets of vegetables. Prayers on pieces of paper were folded over branches of trees and bushes.
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| Namiyoke-Jinju/Shrine with beverage and food offerings |
Inside the Tsukiji Fish Market
The fish market was originally in Nihombashi, but moved here after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. It occupies the site of Japan’s first naval training academy. Now on 54 acres is a warren (crowded area) of buildings housing 1,200 wholesale shops supplying 90% of the fish consumed in Tokyo. The market employs 15,000 people and we’re sure we saw half of them!
The fish market is not an area of ships and docks, but of warehouses and trucks. Trucks arrive all night long from fishing ports all over Japan to unload their produce from the sea by 4:00 am. From 4:00 to 5:00 am, wholesalers browse through the goods. At 5:00, the signal sounds for the start of the auction. Only members of the wholesaler associations can participate. They wear their license number tags on their hats, and register their bids in sign language. They yell to get attention, and make furious combinations of fingers in the air. The auctioneer has a hoarse croak and uses the universal incomprehensible language of auctioneers.
Between 6:00 and 7:00 am, the goods are delivered to the wholesalers and prepared for sale. By 7:00 the restaurant owners and retailers arrive to make the rounds of the suppliers. All is usually over by 9:00 am.
Exploring Shimbashi
It was only 7:00 am on our first full day in Japan. We were ready for breakfast. We ordered two Y600 (about $5) bowls of ramen noodles from an older woman in her 5’x5’ noodle shop. She also gave us an empty bowl, seeing we were sharing between three people. We stood at a makeshift counter to slurp (see sidebar) our noodles along with other customers.
Sidebar:
In Japan, it is okay to slurp your noodles and sip broth from the lip of your bowl! How else do you eat soup with chopsticks?
Crowds of school students were also getting bowls of noodles from several noodle shops on the street.
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| Students eating ramen for breakfast |
We continued along Shin-ohashi-dori towards the Shimbashi area of Tokyo. On one side were smelly canals filled with debris and wrecks of boats. On the other side were construction sites of new high-rise buildings. We walked along the moat of the Hama Rikyu, or detached palace, underneath an expressway. We were looking for a place to cross the busy divided street, but did not see anything for a good half-mile. We did find piles of junk with locked up bikes, hibachis, and blankets that appeared to belong to homeless people.
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| Homeless abode |
We retraced our steps to a pedestrian overpass to walk on the other side of the same street. This time we were looking for a glimpse into the Japan Rail Shiodome railroad yards. This is the location of the “0” kilometer marker for all the JR routes, and a section of the original tracks commemorates the starting point of Japan’s first railway service between Shimbashi and Yokohama in 1872.
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| Japan Rail Yards, starting point of Japan's first railway service |
Our views were blocked by construction, although we did see elevated subways, electric trains, and bullet trains passing by.
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| Shinkansen/Bullet train |
We walked around the entire perimeter of the area without any luck.
On our walk, we did receive packets of facial tissue used for some advertising campaign. And we bought drinks from a vending machine. By now, throngs of commuters were pouring out of train stations on their way to work. They were fairly orderly in staying to the left side of walkways, and even staying single file on narrow pedestrian overpasses.
We did see a very few pigeons in the city, but mostly heard crows.
Building styles were eclectic and mixed. Trees or flowers were planted in any free spaces. At all the construction sites, there were uniformed men guarding the gates and directing construction traffic in and out. They politely waved us by.
Hama Rikyu Tei-in
We were the first in line at 9:00 am to purchase the Y300 tickets to the Hama Rikyu Tei-in, the Detached Palace Gardens. The land here was originally owned by the Owari branch of the Tokugawa family. When one of the family became shogun in 1709, his residence was turned into a shogunal palace with pavilions, ornamental gardens, pine and cherry groves, and duck hunting ponds. The Garden became a public park in 1945. There were no original buildings left. Some were reconstructed, and others left as bare foundations.
First stop on our tour was the 300-year old black pine, with its undulating branches covered with straw and propped up with tall wooden “crutches”. It was planted by the 6th shogun, Ienobu.
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| 300-year old black pine tree |
The flower garden was simply plowed dirt at this time of year, with pigeons pecking away at whatever they could glean. In springtime it is a field of yellow rapeseed blossoms, and in the fall it is full of various hues of cosmos (type of flower). We did see a patch of pink and white cosmos in the distance.
The peony garden was under a trellis covered with netting to keep out the birds. There are 1,200 plants of 57 varieties, oops, we mean species, that bloom in April. We did see large bushes of hydrangeas in bloom throughout the garden.
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| Lace-cap Hyfrangea |
And century plants taller than a person.
We crossed a small bridge to the restrooms, with a choice of Western-style and Japanese-style (see sidebar) toilets.
Sidebar:
Western-style toilets are as we know them in the U.S.
Japanese-style toilets are ceramic holes-in-the-floor, oblong-shaped troughs with taller sides on the back half! Sorry! No picture!
The rest house was a large open pavilion with benches, photos of the original buildings and present-day flowers on the walls, mangy cats, and interesting drain spouts made of a chain of reversed “bells”.
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| Resthouse drainage system |
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| Chain of reversed "bells" |
We climbed Shin-hinokuchi-yama, a man-made mound of dirt, a miniaturization of a mountain.
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| Kent and Brynne on the miniature mountain |
From atop the mountain we viewed the moat, the Sumida-gawa (Sumida River) parallel to it, and Tokyo Bay beyond. In the haze we could see the modern suspension Rainbow Bridge.
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| Ancient water gate and lock |
As we walked around the pond, we saw uniformed older men with long poles removing algae from the water. We saw a noisy goose walking in the grass next to a sign requesting one to “keep off the grass.”
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| Please keep off the grass! |
A black and white bird was looking for food along some rocks in the water. The food was large water roaches!
We came upon strange berms (earth walls) with wooden screens looking down narrow creeks which spread like fingers from the duck pond. Up by the duck pond was a gazebo-like duck blind.
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| Medieval duck-hunting ground |
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| Duck-hunting blind |
Apparently they once had domestic ducks which lured wild ducks onto the pond. Somehow they got the ducks to swim down the narrow creeks. At some point a noise was made to scare the ducks, and they would fly up into the waiting nets of hunters lined up on either side of the creeks!
We began crossing the pond on Otsutai-bashi, an 118-meter long bridge reconstructed entirely of Japanese cypress, which connected three islands to two shores.
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| Otsutai-bashi/Bridge |
The main island had a large teahouse, a replica of one built in 1707. It was here that former President U.S. Grant and his wife had an audience with Emperor Meiji in 1879. The teahouse can be rented for weddings and parties. For Y500 we could have had tea and sweets.
The center island was Konoji-shima, with a very old wisteria vine. The third island had a wisteria arbor.
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| Iris "stream" |
Next we saw a “stream” of iris in bloom. We may not have visited Japan during the prime seasons of cherry blossoms, or autumn colors, but we did come during iris season! Many shades of purple, white, and combos. A lone stone lantern, a stone pagoda, and a lone live photographer.
There were always places to sit to contemplate, but we sat to rest our feet!
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| Iris |
Tsukiji Hongan-ji
After leaving the Garden, we returned past the fish market which was still busy with the hand and diesel carts delivering loads to trucks and vans. Further up Shin-ohashi-dori was the Tsukiji Hongan-ji, Tokyo’s main branch of the Kyoto-based Nishi-Hongan-ji of the Jodo sect of Buddhism. Founded by Shinran Shonin (1173-1262), the temple was first located here in 1657. It was destroyed at least 5 times, before wooden reconstruction was abandoned after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The present stone buildings date from 1935. The temple was designed by Chuto Ito, who also designed the Meiji-jingu in Harajuku. He also lobbied for Japan’s first law for preservation of historic buildings. He was a student of Tatsuno Kingo who designed the Tokyo Eki/Railroad Station.
Ito traveled extensively in Asia. In this temple, the evocation of classical Hindu architecture as seen in the domes and ornaments, was his homage to India as the cradle of Buddhism.
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| Tsukiji Hongan-ji |
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| Influence of Hindu architecture |
Signs welcomed us to enter freely, despite a service in progress. The readings, songs, and organ music seemed very Christian-like. Chairs were set up like pews.
The temple venerates Amida Buddha, a benevolent standing figure.
Modern Tsukiji
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| Bicycle parking lot |
We walked through some side streets of Tsukiji, passing several parks in areas that looked like they might have been canals, since the streets bridged them! We passed a park with children taking turns on a hand slide (zip line).
We saw the large peach-colored buildings of St. Luke’s International Hospital. Founded in 1900 by Dr. Rudolf Teusler, an American medical missionary.
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| St Luke's International Hospital |
In the front courtyard was a small red brick and granite building, a wing of the original hospital. The courtyard was full of plants and trees, wooden animal sculptures, and a meandering path. The hospital is said to be the most pleasant, as well as best equipped and most restorative, medical facility in Tokyo.
In the traffic island at the next corner were two small monuments.
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| Monuments to Yukichi Fukuzawa founding Keio University and to Ryotaku Maeno and Gempaku Sugita |
The taller monument with two granite slabs was for Ryotaku Maeno and Gempaku Sugita, who translated a work of European science into Japanese with a group of colleagues, samurai and physicians. Maeno was in the service of Lord Okudaira who owned a prominent mansion in Tsukiji. In 1770, Maeno acquired a Dutch book on human anatomy in Nagasaki. It took four years to translate, at a time when Japan was still closed to the outside world. Between Maeno and his colleagues, they had only a few hundred Dutch words, and no other resources except for diagrams in the book. Scholars of the time were frustrated by the trickle of scientific knowledge coming through the Dutch colony in Nagasaki, especially those who wanted to modernize. The translation Kaitgi Shinso/New Book of Anatomy was published in 1774 and had tremendous influence. Japan began to turn away from Chinese scholarship as it learned more in science and technology from the West.
The smaller memorial with an open book commemorates the founding of Keio University by Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901). He was the most influential educator and social thinker of the Meiji period. He was the son of a low-ranking samurai, in the same clan as Maeno. He was sent by his lord to start a school of Western learning. He began teaching classes in the Matsudaira residence in 1858. The school later moved to Mita. Engraved on the monument is a famous Fukuzawa quote: Heaven created no man above another, nor below. This was uttered when the feudal regime was still in power, a daring thought for the time. It took Japan almost a century to catch up with Fukuzawa’s liberal and egalitarian vision.
We continued past more St. Luke’s buildings. Several square blocks north of St. Luke’s was a foreign settlement created after the signing of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Commerce in 1858. Among the residents here was the late 19th century Scottish surgeon and missionary Henry Faulds. He was intrigued by the Japanese custom of putting thumbprints on documents for authentication. He began research to establish that no two fingerprints were alike. In 1880, he wrote a paper for Nature magazine supporting uses of fingerprinting in criminal investigation.
Tsukuda-jima
Our next destination was across the Tsukuda-ohashi bridge over the Sumida-gawa.
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| Sumida-gawa River and view of the Rainbow Bridge (1987-1993) |
The island of Tsukuda-jima was reclaimed from the mudflats at the mouth of the Sumida-gawa. The name dates to 1613, when the shogunate ordered a group of fishermen from the village of Tsukuda near Osaka to be brought here, officially to supply the castle with whitebait (small bait fish), and unofficially to keep an eye on maritime traffic and report any suspicious activity.
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| Tsukugen Shop |
Along the breakwater we found a shop selling items for tsukudani, a delicacy and product for which the island is famous. Originally made exclusively with whitebait, it is now made using other fishes, seaweed, or even vegetables, boiled in soy sauce, and eaten with rice. We bought 100 grams of calamari in the sticky sweet sauce. We weren’t hungry for lunch, but bought a huge bottle of ice cold water to guzzle down as we sat by the river.
At the end of the breakwater was a building that looked like a squat lighthouse.
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| "Lighthouse" |
Behind it were some modern condos, and a public park.
Beyond a greenish bronze torii (see sidebar) and down a side street was the gate to Sumiyoshi-jinja, a shrine established by the fishermen from Osaka. The god in the temple is the protector of those who make their livelihood from the sea. Once every three years (next in 2002), the shrine celebrates its main festival on the first weekend in August. The god is brought out for a procession in an unusual eight-sided palanquin (see sidebar). Preceding him, carried high in the air are huge golden lion-heads with jaws snapping in mock ferocity to drive away any evil influences from the path. As it passes, people douse it with water to recall an earlier custom (before the breakwater was built) of carrying the palanquin to the river for dunking.
Sidebar:
Torii (gates) are meant to symbolize the separation of the secular from the spiritual world of a Shinto shrine. Legend is that the shape of the gate derives from the shape of a rooster perch, because it was a rooster crowing that awakened the sun goddess who then brought light to the world.
Sidebar:
A palanquin is an east Asian covered litter carried by two poles on the shoulders of two or four men.
At this shrine, there were again several side shrines, and a place with a fountain and trough of water with ladles to catch water to cleanse your hands and mouth.
We wandered through the neat and narrow streets of the area.
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| Narrow street |
The residents filled every available space with potted plants, bonsai, even a tub with a turtle in it, driftwood, chimes, etc. The old houses with tile roofs could have come straight from the Edo period as this area has survived all natural and man-made disasters.
Back "Home" to Aunt Kyoko's
We walked back to the subway station, and took the Yurakacho line back “home”. We took the wrong exit out of the station, and had to walk back over the station to find the right way to Aunt Kyoko’s house. It was only 1:00 pm, but we had had a full day already!
Aunt Kyoko gave us a “small” lunch of fried rice, rice balls wrapped in seaweed, salad of cucumbers, greens, and tomatoes, and slices of mango. Yuriko was off visiting friends.
Then we took a nap!
Aunt Kyoko and Kimie live on a narrow street with no sidewalks, and people and bikes share the road with a few cars. The front of their house is a metal garage door, and a wrought-iron gate leading to an open area beside the garage.
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| Aunt Kyoko's house |
The open area has a flagstone path, and many potted plants and flowers. A fake bamboo fence separated their house from the neighbor’s only a couple feet away.
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| Aunt Kyoko's front door |
The house itself is three stories, and covered with pale yellow tile. The first floor has the entry way with a stone floor for your shoes, then a step up to wood floors where we would wear slippers. They had a supply of slippers for guests! There is a living room which houses the family shrine. Aunt Kyoko lights candles in the shrine daily, and adds fresh rice on occasion. There is also a variety of bottles of liquor. Family shrines are set up to honor the ancestors, and this one was specifically for Uncle Toshio K, who apparently enjoyed drinking.
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| Shrine for Uncle Toshio |
The first floor also had a toilet, and storage rooms.
The second floor has the very small and narrow kitchen, and a dining room furnished Western-style. There is also the toilet room with a sink and a washlet (see sidebar) which is a Western-style toilet with all the bells and whistles!
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| A washlet with running water over the tank to wash your hands |
Sidebar:
The “washlet”, the Western-style toilet with all the bells and whistles, has a touch-control pad on the wall.A button controls the temperature of the heated seat, another causes water to splash upward on your behind, another has water spray in a more forward direction, another turns a blow dryer on to your bottom, and another causes just the sound of flushing - to get you in the mood. There is also an off button, and a flush button, although we usually used the handle on the side of the toilet!
The bathtub is in a totally separate room with an adjoining room with a sink. The second floor also has the main bedroom which belonged to Aunt Kyoko. It had a double bed and a TV, and a comfortable chair. Aunt Kyoko was letting us use this bedroom during our stay. Brynne used a futon on the carpeted floor. (Aunt Kyoko slept on a futon in the living room downstairs.)
The third floor had a bedroom and a toilet, and an outside area to hang clothes to dry, very commonplace throughout Japan.
A Visit to the C Family
We left Aunt Kyoko’s at 5:00 pm (this is still June 8th!) with an overnight bag to visit the C
family. Kent had known Herb C from college, and we were good friends when they moved to Rumford, RI in 1989. Then soon after we moved to Jacksonville, Herb joined the State Department, and the Cs went abroad. They had been in Tokyo for one school year. We took two subway lines, and walked a long way uphill on Rappongi-dori, before asking for directions from two American women, and finding the American Embassy Compound. Herb was at the gate, and escorted us back to their apartment. Katie (9) was at a birthday party, and we met Jenny (15) on her way to an American Club event. Kristin was busy with dinner in their State Department-furnished home, but decorated with personal effects from their stays in Nepal and the Ivory Coast. The apartment’s front door was on the 7th floor of the building, but their apartment was on three floors! We were put downstairs in the study/guest room with a bath and storage. The main floor had a spacious living room with floor-to-ceiling windows and great views. There was also a dining room and relatively large kitchen. Upstairs there must have been three bedrooms and a bath. Brynne slept in Katie’s room in a sleeping bag.
We had drinks, and then dinner of salmon al pesto, asparagus, and a cucumber and tomato salad. There was also very good French bread from a local bakery. Herb then had to go to a meeting, but Katie came home to entertain us! When Herb came home, we had dessert of ice cream and pecan pie with a couple of candles for celebrating Kent’s birthday, a day or so early.
Despite a Dr. Pepper and a Coca-cola (from the U.S.!), we were fading fast. A shower and to bed by 11:00 pm.
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