Tsukiji Market

Our dear friends at ComIn had planned to go to the famous fish market, Tsukiji, with us. On saturday we went to the destination.
While waiting for Yoko and William on the train station a woman came up to us and asked if we were "the swedish girls". That was Neta. She works at another IKEA and was joining us that day. It is nice to meet new people all the time!
While walking to the market place we passed a magnificent building. we decided to have a look. When entering there was a mass of some sort. Munks was chanting and burning incens. Nice to be able to just walk in on such a occation.
Any how. There is some thing very special about this place. Do you know about the musical-group X-Japan? They are to Japan as Metallica are to America you could say.
Some years ago one of the members of this group commited suicide and this templel was the place he was buried in. They had a table like a shrine for this fomer X-Japan member who was called Hide by the way.

Hongwanji Temple

Inside the Temple

Hide's shrine

Then we went to the market! It was about noon, so most of the fish was already gone. If you want to experience the real thing you have to go really early in the morning! Actually we saw a tuna fish being cut up. We had no idea they were so big!
You would find all sorts of funny things at the market. Mostly things you could eat, mostly stuff we never knew existed. So now we know where wasabi comes from, that the dryed fish-fens are used in warm sake and how japans most expensive mushroom looks like!

Then we went to lunch at an extremly tiny restaurant. The table was a small desk facing the wall, we all sat in a row. When standing outside a waitress came out and showed us a sign that said something like "foreighneirs can not dine here because we do not speak other languages than japanese". Fortunatly we had Yoko so she ordered for us. We have never tasted so good grilled salmon!

Mushrooms, 24 150 yen for these 2.

Sushi chefs slicing tuna.

Fresh Wasabi.

Lunch at a tiny little restaurant.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at a lovely little café. Just enjoying each others company.
At eveningtime we walked to Ginza. Looked at architecture and did some shopping. Very lovely!
Here are some pictures from our day:

A rosty house.

Multy-colored roses. And, yes! They are authentic roses!

A personalized bike.

Don't remember the name of this building. It is in Ginza and it is huge!!! Fantastic architecture. It is hard to show that in pictures though...

Lorries and trucks in japan are very small compared to the ones in Sweden....

Snacks that goes good togeather with beer. We did not taste this one! Actually it's raw squid that is marinated in its own intestents...

A glass building in Ginza.