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Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007 Tokyo Shinbun
The Tsukiji Fish Market is now an important tourism resource and also
a cultural treasure for Japan.
I made a subscription to the newspapers as the follows:
The Tsukiji Fish Market is now an important tourism resource and also a
cultural treasure for Japan.
I work as a tour guide. For tourists that come to Japan, the Tsukiji Fish
Market is a must place to visit as well as Mt. Fuji and Asakusa Sensoji
Temple. For example, on a web site called "Trip-advisor" the
top list of "Tokyo Attraction Best 10" is the Tsukiji Market.
The Tsukiji Market is ranked at the 2nd place of the hot spots to visit
in the whole Japan in the guide book named "lonely planet". The
1st place is, "The temples and gardens of Kyoto," and the 3rd
place is, "spas."
The name of the Tsukiji Fish Market got famous to the foreign tourist in
these 10-years. In the 1995 edition of "lonely planet," you can't
even find the word, "Tsukiji." The name of the Tsukiji Fish Market
grew strong as the worldwide view towards food culture started to change.
Foreign tourists probably see a different culture there that counters the
culture symbolized by fast food and supermarkets.
The characteristic of the Tsukiji Market is that it is the monster gigantic
fish market--in terms of the transaction volume of fish and the point that
they make the standards of the nation wide market prices--that stands at
the top of the 86 Central Wholesale Markets that exists at 56 cities all
around Japan. There is not such a monster fish market in the world besides
the Tsukiji Fish Market and it maintains its status because it has the
Ginza area at the center of the gigantic consuming region, Tokyo at its
backyard. The most famous sushi restaurant in Japan located at Ginza, which
was rated as a Michelin Red Guide Three-star restaurant lately, buys from
the Tsukiji Market, of course.
The middlemen's stores that were about 1300, five years ago, lessened to
about 800, now. I hope strongly that the relocation of the Market doesn't
trigger the extinction of the unique alternative of the fish distribution
in the world.
Naoto Nakamura
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