Fish, Rain and Rani

The famous Tokyo fish market was in the news last week because at the morning fish auction, a 457lb tuna sold for $1.76 million. You have to get there at 5 in the morning to see the auction action, so we passed on that, but we did see plenty of action and plenty of fish. This is a wholesale market that sells fish that is distributed throughout the entire country so it is very busy and very big. Everybody eats fish.  At every meal. Every day.

After leaving this vast space we decided to go visit Ueno Park, walk around, and because it was starting to rain, maybe spend some time in one of its half-dozen museums. Our preference was the Tokyo National Museum but unfortunately because of the coming New Year it was closed and the only one open was a museum showing art from the New York Metropolitan. We didn't come half way around the word to see that so we decided to push on through the rain and visit the Shinto shrines in the park but eventually the rain forced us inside. The Met show was fine. Crowded, but fine.

After the museum we wandered the park a bit more but then got in out of the cold and damp and went for lunch of steaming hot noodles nearby. Here are Bill and Daniela anticipating the food:

The rain kept coming and increasing by the hour. We couldn't go back to the apartment because first, what would we do in such a tiny place? (it was still mid-afternoon); and second, we had checked out from our place that morning for the next four days because tonight we were going to meet up with Rani and head on over to the bullet train (Shinkansen) for a 3-4 hour ride to Kyoto. 

We got the impression that people in Tokyo don't go home to get out of the rain either. They go shopping.

We finally met up with Rani and boarded the Shinkansen. Rani has been in Japan since September and she's such a pro. She really knows her way around.