This being our penultimate day, we had a few things to tick off our checklist. Typically, the sun has hidden away and we are now in the midst of typhoon ‘Mindulle’, which is hammering us with wind and rain. Possibly preparing us for our return to the homeland?
So we headed out with our umbrellas this morning towards Tsukiji fish market. You may have heard about this place as it is famous for its tuna auctions early in the morning, when the huge tuna are sold off to the highest bidder – whether that be a restaurant or a trader. We obviously didn’t witness the auction itself, but we did get an idea of the sheer size of some of these fish, as there were several stalls where fillets were being literally sawed up and boxed.
In the huge warehouse which holds the market (soon to be moved at the end of this year!) we explored the maze of stalls, selling all the types of sea life you can imagine. This was not the place for vegetarians. There was a lots of fishy carnage going on.
There were crabs – alive, cooked, salted, covered in unidentifiable sandy stuff, whelks, sea snails, HUGE clams…
Buckets of shimmering fresh fish of all sizes, tiny little fish and…EELS (a Japanese favourite, and very yummy).
Eels up inside ya….
We then went to find some early lunch, taking advantage of the fresh produce we were surrounded by. We found a reasonably priced sashimi (raw fish) restaurant close by the market and shared a lunch between us. The fish was indeed very fresh, and preceeded by a pot of egg custard and miso – IT WORKS! (I inhaled it. Hugh did not.)
After trying to think of things we could do which would shelter us from the storm, we realised we had not done one very important thing, which I pretty much travelled all the way to Japan especially for. CAT CAFE TIME. We headed to a little place in Asakusa, which I had found on t’interweb. It was the most hilarious place. We went up to the 6th floor of an unassuming tower block in a lift in which the light had broken. Totally pitch black. We were then greeted by a lovely Japanese woman who was ranting on the phone to someone to fix her lift light. She spoke good English and welcomed us into her cat cafe (nb. this was a room. In an apartment block. Filled with cats).
As you can see, all of the cats were very happy – in fact, the lady explained to us that she rescued them from the streets. She said there was a big stray cat problem in Tokyo and all in all, she had saved 150!! She had 21 in the room, but the rest had been given for adoption. We had an hour for 800yen, at which we would be then charged 200 yen for every extra 30 minutes. There were toys to play with the cats and we watched the closing ceremony of the olympics.
There was a bowl of cat…
Just add a teaspoon of catnip and stir well.
Some of my favourite were two HUGE cats who were siblings, and literally chatted to the lady. It was magical.
Big chap.
It was brilliant, and made the honeymoon complete. I even got a kiss from a kitten.
So, that was our penultimate day! Only one more day to go…..let’s hope this typhoon doesn’t blow us away.
Rice ball count: 0
Cat face count: infinity.
Historycatz 