I am a graduate student at UC Berkeley studying the diversity and evolution of whelks. This summer I was sponsored by the NSF (USA) and JSPS (Japan) to work with Dr. Seiji Hayashi at Nagoya University in Japan to collect buccinid gastropod (whelk) tissue samples and examine whelk shell collections at musems throughout Japan. Sugoi! Some of the snails that I study are pictured to the right.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Tsukiji Fish Market

Tsukiji is a world-famous fish market in the Ginza area of Tokyo. It is so big and dense that it is really only navigable using the map available at its entrance. The most famous images from the fish market are probably of huge tuna carcases being auctioned off for hundreds to thousands of dollars (that's tens to hundreds of thousands of yen or more). I was not "in the market" (ha ha) for tuna, but was instead searching for tsubu gai. Here are some things I saw.

The Tsukiji sign under ominous skies.
Tsubu gaiBountiful bonito flakes.Wasabi.Large crabs.Little crabs.
And the image below was not from the market, but from my hotel room. It is the complimentary shampoo sample and its description is too good to not include.In case you can not see it, here is what it says, "Rinse In Shampoo. Soft and sweet. Just like The autumn wind. Bring you The pathos street. You fall in nostalgia and sentimentality."

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