Saturday October 17, Tokyo

PHOTOS: Tsukiji Market & Uoriki Retail Store
VIDEO - Tsukiji Fish Market Tuna Auction October 17, 2009
VIDEO - Uoriki Fresh Seafood Store October 17, 2009 Tuna Demo

Today was a very exciting and educational experience! Seafood on steroids is the only way I can describe it. We woke up at 4:00 am in order to be at the Tsukiji fish market and the daily 5:00 am tuna auction. Tsukiji (pronounced Sukeegee) is the largest seafood market in the world, and like the city of Tokyo, it is ENORMOUS and full of electricty as hundreds of people race past you in all directions. It seemed there were more workers driving electric fork lifts than cars on 490 on my normal commute to work. When we arrived and I commented to our host, Masayuki Yamada how impressed I was with the number of trucks loaded and running ready to deliver, he laughed and remarked that probably twice that many had already left!
The market is housed in 3 large, semi circular buildings that are as long as 4 football fields each. 800 wholesalers have booths here, operating 5 days a week, excluding Sunday and Wednesday. The selections from what little we covered in 4 hours was very fresh, exotic and had thousands of items. There was so much fish, you could easily fill one of our stores entirely with pallets of seafood, all of which was expected to sell today!
We arrived right when the tuna auction began. This was held in the large tuan hall at 5:00 am as it has been 5 days a week for almost 100 years. Today's auction featured 600 or more Big Eye and Blue Fin tuna all lieing on the floor in neat rows based on species, size and area caught.
300 buyers roamed amongst the tuna, checking each fish for size, quality, and fat content to place bids on. They all had large canes with hooks and flashlights to move the fish around and take their notes.
The auction began and fish moved out quickly, some as fast as in 10 seconds. It was difficult to determine exactly what was happening at first. The auctioneer actually chants in a sort of sing song Japanese style, a price he is willing to start selling the fish for and then a flurry of activity begins as the buyers bid with gestures and grunts. There are 4 different auctioneers working different parts of the hall all at once. It really is fascinating to observe. As soon as a fish is sold, it's immediately tagged and carted out of the tuna hall to the prosepective buyer's stall or truck.
After the auction which only lasted about an hour and a half for all the tuna, we toured the market and saw many species we've never seen or heard of. Many didnt even have English translations. Our host, Yamada picked out about 7 selections he was going to prepare for our dinner this evening at his restaurant. I can't wait!
After our tour we met with Yoichi Imamura, Chairman of Daito Corporation which controls the Tuna Auction and is one of the top 6 seafood suppliers to the market. The market has a hierarchy structure where 6 companies control every single fish that comes in and Daito is the largest. Imamura told us that even though the market does huge volume, it is trending down in sales, about 5% per year as Japanese consumption on seafood, still very high at 77 lbs a year per capita, is losing out to more of a western style diet of chicken and beef. Still it is 5 times higher than what Americans consume.
After Tsukiji we went to the epitome of Japanese retail seafood stores, Uoriki Fresh. Our host Yamada operates this chain of 41 stores and 4 restaurants and took us to his premier shop located underneath the Ikebukuro subway station, one of the largest consumer traffic spots in all of Tokyo. Everyone we spoke with at the Tsukiji market paid homage to him and told us we were fortunate to be hosted by the best retailer of seafood in all of Japan. When we got to the store, it was easy to see the accolades were well deserved.
Japanese retailing out side of supermarkets is a bit different. Space is at a premium and for food shopping, it is like walking throug a mall with an open air food court and stands or counters for specific categories. Each counter is owned by a different company selling very focused items like a meat counter, a bakery, tea etc. The Uoriki counter here was about 2000 square feet and had 360 skus of seafood. All fresh, nothing frozen and 95% was packaged. Each package of filleted fish is beautifully presented, precisionally cut on a bias with very small portions. Service is also way over the top here. Even with 95% of the seafood being self serviced, there were 23 employees working this small stand while we were there, many of course behind the scenes cutting fish, but at least half that many on the sales floor sampling and hawking seafood. A highlight of our tour, Yamada purchased a 160 lb Blue Fin and had a master cutter fillet it in front of a group of excited customers who were in a frenzy ordering the fillets right from it being cut! I hope the video comes out!