Shiogama Fish Market

If you missed out on the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, here’s your next best chance! You don’t have to get up at an ungodly hour to visit the Shiogama Fish Market. It’s open until 1pm! It’s also a real, live fish market, with over 140 stalls, each of them specializing in a specific type of seafood: lobster, tuna, octopus, nori seaweed, whale… In particular, look out for hoya, one of the many local specialties. This alien-looking species is actually a sea squirt, eaten mostly raw as sashimi. You can chat with professionals while they expertly clean and slice their fish. You can also buy nibbles at the stalls, the most beautiful being the rainbow-colored abalone shells stuffed with delicacies such as uni (sea urchin), ikura (salmon roe), abalone and crab. You can even buy seafood at a stall and make your very own seafood rice bowl! Come and get a slice of life in the city of Shiogama.

May 25, 2016