The outer area of the Tsukiji Market is equally exciting.
The outer market is mainly for pickles and dried food. There were also merchants for Japanese handmade knives and tools.
Pickles
Very pricey fungi. I guess it's not as expensive as truffles but a small box of the very best stuff can easily cost more than a meal for 5!
Then, there are the shops and stalls selling food! (I'm loving this entry!!)
For two mornings, we joined the other tourists and have sushi for breakfast in the Inner Area of the market. We saw queues forming in front of two particular shops, so naturally we joined one of the queues. (We later found out that these two shops are recommended by LP so they are very popular). The shops offer set sushi menu with about 8 pieces of sushi. It was perfect for breakfast. The sushi is nicely made and very delicious. However, they weren't THAT special. The sushi was of the normal variety. It was kinda boring.
Breakfast at the tiny sushi shop!
After our first breakfast, we went to the outer market and found that there are many food stalls on the outer edge of the market. There were more queues and we joined the long queues again. We tried the ramen from one of the shop.
A production line for the noodles!
Eating noodles while standing on the side of a busy road!
Then we walked towards one end of the street and saw another long queue, so we had a beef rice don from this specialty shop.
Both were EXCELLENT! It also warms my stomach after the cold breakfast. It was satisfying indeed! I have to say, by the time I got to the end of the queue, I was hungry again. I could have just lined up, wait, eat, and then lined up again! This could have gone on forever! :)
Anyway, our self-control bought us to try something else for dinner that night (OKOK. We wanted to try some adventurous stuff, so we went into town to look for the biggest fish on the planet! Don't ask. and I hope Gr33n Peace won't find this site!)
OK. Back to the market. We went back there for breakfast again the next day. We thought we might just as well try to other shop, for a complete experience! hehehe. It was slightly better than the other one, but not significantly better.
One of the very popular sushi shop in the inner market.
I thought, why not go to the outer market and find some other food again? We ventured out and found a restaurant selling 'Japanese in-shore' tuna sushi and we just can't run away from the chance to try something local!
We entered the shop and was greeted by a sushi chef. We decided to order a la carte and we were given a menu with pictures of all the sushi that they have. There were around 30 choices!!! We ordered most of the 'special' sushi.
Here are a selection:
Boring stuff. But I like fish roe.
Some random white fish. I think it was the hirame (平目) flounder/bastard halibut
More random fish. But this particular one was really nice. Too bad I don't know what fish it is!
One of the special recommendation - Kanpachi (間八)
White trevally (しま鯵) sushi. This was one of the special recommendation and I really like this one too.
The best part of the meal was definitely the inshore otoro (大とろ), which is supposedly the fattiest part of the local bluefin tuna belly.
We also met a very funny chef at the restaurant. One of the guy speaks a little English, so he came around and asked us where we are visiting from. I told him 'England'.
And then I get this odd look from him. OK. I look Asian. But he looked very puzzled. Then, he asked again, 'You mean Beckham-England?' SP and I then just cracked out laughing. It seems that Mr Beckham has got his fair share of fans in Japan :)
For more information about sushi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sushi_and_sashimi_ingredients_and_styles
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