October 16, 4:30 a.m. Tokyo time

Ohayo gozaimasu students,

Are you thinking that I can not sleep? That is not the case. I left the hotel early this morning to visit the Tokyo fish market. Everyone who has visited said that it was worth getting up early to have this experience.

The market is very, very large, and very, very busy. There is much noise from the traffic immediately outside and inside the building, but it is amazingly quiet amongst the workers. The operations were in full swing when I arrived, so these workers must have started work at 3 in the morning. Perhaps it is too early to talk at during this part of the day.

Not only does this market have fish, it almost has everything else you can find it the sea.
When we looked at Japan's geography in class, and I asked what you thought the Japan used as their main source of protein, some of you knew that it was fish. But besides the fish, there was squid, octopus, whelk, crab, clam, oyster, eel, and sea cucumbers. However there, was no Sponge Bob and Patrick the starfish.

The first picture shows a some workers, the next shows fish eggs, and the last picture is of whelk---you can clearly see one coming out of its shell. Click to enlarge.