Day 4 - Tsukiji Fish Market + Tokyo Imperial Palace + Ginza

We woke up at 5am today and we were at the train station by 5.20am.

Tsukiji Fish Market, the biggest fish market in the world, is where we are going. We've got to get there early in order to catch the world famous tuna auction. Indeed, anyone making a trip to Japan should make it a point to stop by here.

A crazy epicentre of fishy activity in the morning, emblazoned by tractors filled with the day's catch swishing past you from left, right and centre, it is inevitable that my pulse quickened dramatically in the midst of this one-of-a-kind experience. Tsukiji will be moving in a couple of years time and perhaps will be closed to the public from then on, so don't miss it ever.

Fresh tuna...


Frozen Tuna...


On top of that, Tsukiji outside the auction areas were filled with other treasures from the sea.



After all the action, we rewarded ourselves with one of Japan's top eating experience: We ate the freshest sushi in the world at Tsukiji at the crack of dawn. And we had that at Sushi Bun, apparently the world's oldest sushi bar. All 150 years of it.

The Uni (sea urchin), anago (eel with sushi bun's special sauce) and otoro (tuna belly) were to die for...


A fantastic start to the day, we headed back to Andon to clean up abit and met with a slice of daily life for the Japanese - morning rush hour. It was exactly like what you always see on TV, with train attendants giving a helping to squeeze people into the cabins. I managed to snap this.



Apparently the Japanese in the train were pretty amused by me photographing them. A few laughed and even waved!

Late morning came and we were headed to the Tokyo Imperial Palace and East Gardens. Stopping at the grand Tokyo station (itself an attraction), we stopped by the Marunouchi building and picked up a pizza from Jucheim. Jucheim is this super ATAS patissierie that sells an almost too beautiful to eat selection of mouthwatering cakes, pastries and warm meals.

The pizza we picked up was phenomenol. Unlike the hard, dry crust you would expect from a pizza from a bakery, the crust was light and airy, yet with enough bite and crunch to the thin crust. It's a pity I didn't take a picture of it.

Back to our destination, the imperial palace is a beautifully constructed royal home surrounded by moats with distinctive white walls. It is said to be the most expensive piece of real estate in the world.



Admission is free but visitors have to collect a token upon entering and return it to the palace guards upon exiting. We took a leisurely, albeit it was super hot, walk in the expansive grounds of the palace. The place is so freakin huge that it kinda killed the leisure part of it towards the end. Felt like a hike. I told myself to treat it as the pre-prep for our Fuji climb.

Hungry by now, we moved on to glitzy Ginza, home to Japan's most expensive and upmarket shopping. For the ultimate people-watching experience, do make a stop for some coffee and cake at Le Cafe Doutor located right smack in the middle of Ginza crossing. We ordered the 'thousand layer crepe cake' which I read somewhere I think was first made famous in New York.



Ginza is indeed one notch higher in terms of 'class level' with the endless stream of Japanese tai tais thronging the place.



Here are some iconic buildings we saw in Ginza. This is the Mikimoto building.


And this is a close up of the Hermes Building .




We visited the Apple Centre and Sony building in Ginza and soon it became dark. We had made plans to eat the famous Wagyu beef in this yakiniku place called Ginza Kahjohken. As we were a little early, I felt a bit apprehensive about entering the near empty restaurant. I was concerned that if we were to spend an obscene amount of moolah on something that didn't match up to our high expectations, my mood will be sorely affected.

We decided to go in anyway. No regrets at all.

Instead of sticking to the original plan of having the all-you-can-eat but lower grade wagyu beef, we opted for the higher quality wagyu instead. It proved to be the right decision as the first thick slab of meat that greeted us was shockingly aesthetic, superbly marbled with fat.



For the unitiated, Japanese wagyu is prized for it's marbling of fat within the meat. And this piece of meat that was presented to us was unlike anything I had seen before. Man!

Being a yakiniku place, there was a grill at every table where you'll cook your own meat. I grilled the meat lightly and put it into my mouth. The high concentration of fat caused the meat to literally melt to half its size in my mouth. Ooohhh...the pure sensation of the slithery, tasty fat oozing out of the meat to caress my taste buds is heavenly.

May I add that by 7pm, the place was packed to the brim. Filled with Salary men and the like. Apparently, this place was a really popular place after all. My worries were unfounded. Silly.

The chinese speaking waitress assigned to us also recommended the bibimbap and a nice tofu salad to go along with our meal. And of course we had beer wherever we went. I think we had Kirin Gold here? Ck and me agreed that was the nicest variety we had. In Singapore, you can find it sold in Meidi-ya and Isetan Scotts. It all added up nicely to a very well balanced, delicious meal.

After dinner, we headed to Roppongi for some nightlife but we didn't quite end up there. Instead we walked all the way to Tokyo tower. Japan's version of the Eiffel Tower. We walked along the streets of Roppongi and saw there were lots of black men, all touts for the various night spots in Roppongi. Hmmm... interesting. How the hell did they all end up here?

Doesn't it look like Paris?


We didn't get to go up Tokyo Tower in the end as it just closed when we got there. We did manage to take some photos though. We were pretty shacked out by the time we got here so we decided to head back to Andon soon after. It's been a really long day after all.