04/04 - Tokyo

Today was a heavily sea themed day, with some sky thrown in. we started the day bright and early by going to to tsukiji fish market, the worlds largest fish market. we woke up at 5 and got there about 6am. the activity around the market was frantic and was very interesting to see. when we got there, the tuna autions were over, but we saw many people preparing the blue fin tuna they just bought.

The various fish on display in the market was impressive, with many things i had never seen before. one of the cooler things were whale steaks. keegan and i wanted to buy some to try, but it was 1.3 kg and would have cost about $30. we settled for some sashimi instead.

upon leaving the market area, we went to line up at sushi dai, a sushi restaurant highly recommended to us. the restaurant only sat 13 people, so the line up moved slow and we waited for about 1 hour 30 minutes before our turn, but it was worth it. we got the chef special, 10 pieces, plus a roll and egg roll and miso soup. you could pick anything at the end to top it off. the first piece was blue fin tuna toro which was amazing. it literally melted on your tongue and the fat content was very high. the second piece was something called hobo, but i don't know what it was. the third peice was golen eye snapper with was also very good. we then got some miso soup and tehn surf clam, which was fresh, different from the frozen stuff back home. it had much more flavor. the next peice was sea urchin which was amazingly smooth, very good and probably my 2nd favorite overall. we then got bonito, which was pretty good and nice to see in sashimi form instead of flake form. the next piece was spanish mackerel which was amazingly tender and my 3rd favorite. we then got shrimp, tuna rolls and clam rolls, and an egg roll, which was slightly sweet, very good. the last of the 10 was sea eel with was awesome fresh. for my bonus i went for another peice of toro since it was so good. as we left the restaurant, we walk to another market to eat some fresh unagi and snacks.

we met back up with dima, who didnt want to eat, and eached to tokyo odaiba, a man made bay. the main reason to go here for us was to go to muscle park and do the ninja warrior/sasuke course. before doing that we checked out the man made beach which was nice.

the ninja warrior course consisted of 4 stations. the first was the hand bike, the 2nd was a finger ledge, the 3rd was a pull up later, and the last was a bar slide. the first station was pretty each and did it no problem. the 2nd start required you to travel horizontally and vertically along a 3cm finger ledge with our falling, i couldn't do it. the 3rd stage, ytou had to do a pull up then remove the bar from the peg and place it onto the higher ledge, i got it higher, but lost my grip and fell. the final stage required you to hold on a bar and which suspended. push your way also parallel bars to the end then swing to the safe area. i got to the end no problem but lost my momentum and couldn't swing far enough to the save area. keegan and i both passed and failed the same stages and had very similar times, both under a minute. it was fun, but expesnsive or i would have kept trying.

we then walked to the toyota city showcase and history collection. it was an exibit about toyota stuff with all their models, a auto drive car course and some attractions. we saw a movie ride with moving seats showing a couple laps around toyotas speedways, it was neat. the classic car collection had cars from various makers and times.

keegan and i then went to tokyo tower to take pictures of tokyo at sunset and night. tokyo is huge and the tower was a great place to take pictures. while on the tower we felt a slight swaying sort of like a small earth quake. dima, who was at the hostel, said we felt the same thing as well, so it might have been a small one.

we went to a local noodle place for udon dinner. the cook/owner was really nice and we taked about his store and travel. he gave us a bunch of free food, which was very nice of him. i had to the fried tofu and egg udon. the cool part is the noodles were hand made and really good.

after dinner we went to the roppongi district to take some more night pictures before heading back home.