Japan Day 2: Something's fishy about this place

Still on California time (17 hours behind Tokyo), we were predictably awake before 5:00am, so we got dressed and took the metro to the Tokyo Fish Market. It's a little confusing to tackle to Tokyo subway for the first time at 5:30am in a jet lagged, decaffeinated state, but we had directions from the concierge and everything is very clearly marked. All the stations are numbered so it's easy to figure out which direction to go. Announcements are usually in both Japanese and English. The only thing that confused us is that there are two separate subway systems - the Metro and the Toei lines. We bought a day card for one, then on the way back realized we couldn't get back on because it was a different line. So we ended up with a separate day card for each line today (700 yen each) instead of the combo card (1000 yen).

We missed the auction at the fish market, but got to see the market in full swing. There was a frenzy of activity - motorized carts racing around the market delivering fish, people carrying boxes - seemingly with no rules. You had to stay on your toes to keep out of their way! This seemed very different from our introduction. For one, no one bowed at us. I was pretty sure that most of the time one of these carts was going to take someone's shins out:

But it was fascinating. Huge slabs of tuna lay on boards, defrosting or being cut up. It was very colorful with plenty of things that we couldn't easily identify. It looks like there are at least two types of octopi here:

The fish market was both clean and smelled reasonably non-fishy, despite the tons of fish everywhere. I have a feeling they wash and scrub everything regularly to keep it that way. I should have sought out fresh sushi at the market, but I was too jet-lagged and hadn't even had tea or coffee, so my brain never made the leap - "hey, there's amazingly fresh fish here! I bet I could buy some sushi!" Nope. Never thought of it.

We got back on the subway to head back to the hotel and dodged about a hundred schoolgirls who were entering the station when we were leaving. The school kids travel in huge packs during the week, and I think they go to school on the weekend, too - all of them in neatly pressed uniforms.

Next up, breakfast...

* I've split Day 2 up in to 3 parts. We did so much that first full day in Tokyo that it was a lot to put in one blog entry.