Explore a city when it is asleep

Tokyo - 20/05/2010 - 27/05/2010

Urbaneering is all about creatively exploring urban spaces. One of the ideas from our guide is to explore a city when it is asleep. There are two ways to accomplish this - stay up late or get up early. We tried both.

Getting up early
Tokyo's fish-market in Tsukiji presents the perfect opportunity to do so. Getting up at 4am we arrived at the fish-market around 4.45am and it was already in full swing. People whizzing around on little trolley carts full with boxes of fish. We also saw the amazing massive tuna's at various stages as they move through the fish-market - being unloaded frozen from the truck; unfrozen being sliced up; a glimpse into the tuna auction; and a newly bought tuna being carted back and lifted...and we have it all on video.

Truck being unloaded with frozen tuna, which look like little rockets:


Carving up the tuna:
We were also lucky enough to be able to witness first-hand one of the huge tuna's being skillfully filleted.



Auction:
The tuna auction sees hundreds of fresh tuna laid out on the auction hall floor and frenzied bidding activity by the fishmongers. The auction is off-limits to foreigners, but we managed to sneak a peek before being ushered way by a superbly-attired official.



Tuna being lifted:



Staying up late:
We also made an attempt to stay up late and to visit an area called Golden Gaia. Walking through this small area (roughly 2,000 square metres (21,520 square feet) in size) is like stepping back in time to early post-war Japan when the area was filled with artists and radicals wanting to change the world. Golden-gai, or golden district, borders the bustling Kabukicho entertainment area in downtown Tokyo and provides a startling contrast to Kabukicho's modern bars, glitzy strip joints and noisy karaoke club. Golden-gaia, is a historical area of dimly lit alleyways and buildings fronted by thin, wooden doors which hosts some 180 tiny pubs in small two storey houses - most bars are only big enough to squeeze in a handful or so customers and almost every bars is serving a different clientele. With such limited space, many of the bars rely on their regulars and charge a cover charge to visitors, some are even closed to 'non-members' and are known to provide a frosty welcome and exorbitant bill to the casual visitor.
Apparently the Lilliputian bars survived the rampant construction of Japan's bubble-economy years, thanks to the passion of its patrons. In the 1980s, when the yakuza, Japan's crime syndicate, was torching properties to sell the land to big-thinking developers, Golden Gai's supporters took turns guarding the area each night.
Spoiled for choice we settled for visiting Golden Gaia's number one anime bar. One would have thought in high-tech Tokyo that the bar might have been super sophisticated, but instead it was a room full of tiny toy figurines and video clips being played out of a TV in the corner. Cocktails were named after characters....we were told anyway...
For more Japan adventures have a look at the previous blog entry