Category: Tokyo

Tokyo

Random Tokyo photos

I think that after many years living in Japan I have lost a little bit my capacity to be surprised while walking in Japanese territory. To avoid that I try to maintain my curiosity alive by asking, learning, reading and taking pictures each day of what I see and catches my attention. Here you have some random photos of little details in Tokyo that activated my curiosity. To those of you who have traveled to Japan: what did specially grab your attention at the beginning? what did you take pictures of? To those of you who have been living here for a while: What is something that keeps surprising you each day?

A man practicing with a baseball bat (without ball) in a residential street.

A Starbucks in an old ugly building in Asakusa.

Two nuns walking in Ichigaya.

Super Mario Bros Wii advertisement

Blind joggers and their guides in Yoyogi.

Ice cream shop in Shimokitazawa

Books piled up in a street waiting for the trash truck.

A second hand Mac in Akihabara.

Reparation of one of the subway ticketing machines.

I like the kanji on the left.

There are more than 7!

Ultraman soft drink

Artificial palm tree in Daikanyama.

JapanGuide Tokyo

Tsukiji fish market

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date April 20, 2010

Tsukiji fish market has been recently on the news because it has been temporarily closed to the public. I visited Tsukiji fish market for the first time when I just arrived to Japan in 2004. These were my impressions when I visited Tsukiji at the time, which I wrote in my Spanish blog:

Tsukiji, in Tokyo, is the largest fish market in the world. Beside being huge, it is worldwide known for its really exotic variety of species like huge tuna fishes, whales, blowfishes or mussels the size of your head. We went to Tsukiji early morning (at 7:30 am) when it’s the most crowded; there we found many people driving around with some kind of carts that move really fast. If you don’t pay attention, one of those carts will run you over, they just don’t care if there’s people around.

Tsukiji fish market

We were really looking forward to see how they cut 300 kg tuna fishes (maguro in Japanese language, very important word in Japanese restaurants). In no more than some minutes they cut a whole fish and prepare it to be frozen; they have really developed a perfect technique to do it as fast as possible. If you want to practice cutting fish, there are arcade machines in Game Centers to practice your fish cutting skills with a plastic knife. There are also arcade games where you have to go fishing in a small boat in the sea and other similar games. As you can see, there is a great passion for fish-related stuff in Japan.

Cutting maguro in Tsukiji

After seeing the maguro cutting, we were given some chopsticks and we ate some fresh raw maguro with a little bit of soy sauce. Amazing breakfast!!

To conclude the post, a small Japanese language lesson. The kanji that we are going to learn is very useful when you are trying to look for a restaurant that serves fish. Fish is “Sakana” in Japanese, it is written using the following kanji:

Kanji of fish = Sakana

Tokyo

A rainy month in Tokyo

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date March 11, 2010

It’s been raining non-stop in Tokyo for almost a month now. Before coming to Japan I was used to the Mediterranean torrential rains that come and go but don’t stick around too long; when I arrived I couldn’t get used to the London-style raining that doesn’t stop for many days or even weeks. Lately I’ve really accepted the fact and now I even enjoy the rain because it’s a great time to take photos in a much different atmosphere than in a normal day. If you visit Japan try to come on times of the year when there is low rain probability: from mid-March to June, or from October to February. In any case, it’s almost sure that you will get at least one rainy day; don’t worry, take an umbrella, go out and enjoy Japan under the rain!

Rain in Tokyo