A Morning at the Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market

s dawn peeled back the city’s neon glow, I weaved through plastic crates at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market, where the air smelled of brine, crushed ice, and the metallic tang of tuna scales. Sunlight trickled through the market’s corrugated roof, reflecting off mounds of glistening sardines that shimmered like silver coins. A fisherman in rubber boots hoisted a bluefin tuna larger than himself, its flesh ruby-red under the fluorescent lights, as vendors shouted bids in rapid-fire Japanese.

I knelt beside a stall where octopuses curled the tips of their tentacles, their suckers clinging to Styrofoam trays. "Touch here—see how they pulse?" a vendor said, pressing my finger to an abalone’s sticky shell. Nearby, a chef in a white coat inspected scallops, his knife flicking open their shells to reveal pearly flesh. A forklift rumbled past, its pallet stacked with ice-covered squid, while a stray cat darted between crates, chasing a wayward shrimp.

Sunlight strengthened, warming the market’s concrete floors where water pooled from melting ice. The vendor showed me how to judge a tuna’s freshness by the clarity of its eyes, then sliced a sliver of toro, its marbling like snowflakes in ruby. "Eat quickly—morning’s catch is best," he smiled, handing me the fatty tuna that melted on my tongue like butter.

By mid-morning, the market hummed with delivery bikes and tourists clutching guidebooks. I left with saltwater on my shoes and the memory of that toro’s richness—reminded that in Tokyo, mornings begin with the ocean’s bounty, where every fish scales under the dawn’s first light, and every slice of sashimi carries the wild pulse of the sea.