Early bird gets to “Sea” –“Food”—Visit to Tsukiji Wholesale seafood/tuna market

The learning objective of the first week here in Tokyo was to get a view of how certain businesses operate and their supply chain methods. Dr. Ross divided the class into teams and assigned us certain points to analyze when we visited these companies and my team’s focus points were physical distribution, how product is moved, and logistics and warehousing. Early Monday morning around 4am we were able to get a hands on experience with one of Tokyo’s most important business operations, the distribution of Fresh/Frozen Tuna and other fresh seafood.
Business begins early in this operation we were up moving around the city at the crack of dawn. Back home I fall asleep around 4am sometimes so it was culture shock for me to be up moving around the city that early. The usually busy streets of Tokyo were very calm at this time in the morning and it felt like we were the only group of people making move.
Tsukiji is a face paced 24 hours 7 day a week operation where seafood is auctioned, bought, and distributed all over Japan. Our class was given the opportunity to witness some of these auction operations. The most intriguing operation was the auctioning of Tuna. Each fish is auctioned off separately in this warehouse. Wholesalers spend a period of time to inspect the quality of each Tuna and that gives them a base of how much to pay or its value. The Tuna is divided into two categories Fresh and Frozen. Frozen is more of a commodity and purchased in large orders at a lower price. Fresh Tuna has a lower demand but is placed at a higher price. The auctioning is very intense and the auctioneer communicates with the bidders through hand signals and a loud projected voice. This facility also has a market that consist of around 700 individually owned booths that sale fresh seafood to customers coming through the market. Individual markets manage these booths. If a creature is in the sea its is caught and eaten in Japan. I seen everything from squid to eel provided at this market, which fits right into the diet of the Japanese culture. They want the freshest products when they eat so it only makes since to eat the most natural creatures the sea can provide. I personally could not adapt to the fresh taste of the foods over here or their choice of the creatures they choose to eat. Squid, snails, sea urchins, and raw varieties of fish are animals that I could not digest into my system, the smell and the taste mad my stomach turn every time but I eventually adjusted to it.