
The Toxic Saga of the Tsukiji Fish Market - fern12
https://www.eater.com/2017/7/25/16019906/tokyo-tsukiji-toyosu-olympics-delay
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donw
Funnily enough, I live in Toyosu, and can see where the market should have
been moved to from my house.

The cause is simple enough: graft and corruption on all levels and at a
massive scale, exposed in large part by Yuriko Koike (the relatively new
governor of Tokyo).

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Reason077
Some similarities to the Berlin Brandenburg Airport saga. They were only a few
weeks away from a planned move of all the airlines into the new airport in
2012, when it turned out there were massive flaws in the design and
construction, and allegations of corruption.

Now it's 2017 and the airport still isn't ready... Maybe 2019?

[https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2017/01/e...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2017/01/economist-explains-18)

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trhway
>It’s also fairly obvious that the fishmongers weren’t widely consulted during
the construction process. The shiny new stalls for vendors are closed off in
an attempt to be more sanitary, but the design deeply limits the mobility of
the fishmongers, especially when cutting large hunks of fish. (In one
television program about the new space, a wholesaler showed just how difficult
it is to go about his business of slicing tuna as his elbows repeatedly bumped
up against the cubicle-tight walls.)

s/fishmongers/programmers/g

"It’s also fairly obvious that the programmers weren’t widely consulted during
the office remodeling process. The shiny new office for the programmers is an
open space in an attempt to be a more collaborative environment, but the
design deeply limits the ability to focus of the programmers, especially when
working on the complex pieces of code. (In one twitter periscope stream about
the new space, a programmer live tweeted just how difficult it is to go about
his business of coding as his focus was repeatedly broken and/or his attention
was repeatedly called for by the multitude of other people's happenings in the
wide open space of the office around him.)

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NegativeLatency
It's really frustrating how hard it is to properly manage/use a resource like
the ocean.

We're not running out of chicken, but we are running out of fish.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Tragedy of the commons. If people owned areas of the ocean in the way they own
areas of land for farming, this would be less of an issue.

~~~
Sangermaine
It's not quite as easy with the ocean. Land doesn't tend to flow around
freely.

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duncan_bayne
And the ocean is _deep_, too, and it's much easier to pollute your neighbours.

But the basic principle is the same: private property rights can help mitigate
these problems.

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Retric
Tell that to the 1322+ Superfund sites in the US costing ~1 billion per year.

The optimum strategy for small land ownership is often maximum exploitation.
In the case of the ocean fishing people would fish as much as possible, and
just wait for more fish to wonder back.

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duncan_bayne
Yeah that's because your bankruptcy laws are broken AFAICT - it's too easy to
hold insufficient funds for post operational clean-up, then transfer assets
elsewhere and declare bankruptcy.

That is, private owners in this case are able to socialise the cost of their
operation, which is no more private ownership than when the profits are
socialised.

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smegel
For a country that functions so well, it's amazing it can still have such
occurrences of dysfunction and corruption. Sounds like this mayor would be a
good prime minister.

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bogomipz
>"Tsukiji is the most exalted fish market on earth, the sort of humbling place
that causes the likes of globally worshipped god-chef René Redzepi to deem it
one of the “seven culinary wonders of the world.”

What a cringe-worthy sentence that is. Also what a load of crap that sentence
is. I'm guessing the writer has never actually been. Tsukiji is a wholesale
fish market. Its smelly, cold and wet with lots of flash frozen fish sitting
on warehouse pallets. Just like what you would expect a wholesale fish market
to be. It just happens to be in Tokyo.

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URSpider94
I highly disagree. I have visited many times, and I find it to be a truly
magical place. The mind-boggling variety of life from the sea, the frenetic
energy, and the tuna auctioned for tens of thousands of dollars - it made an
indelible impression on me.

~~~
bogomipz
>"I highly disagree. I have visited many times, and I find it to be a truly
magical place."

I am curious how many other fish markets have you been to?

Mexico City and New York City have similar scale fish markets with just as
many varieties and with just as much commerce. I'm guessing someone like
Anthony Bourdain or some other TV food celebrity put Tsukiji on the tourist
map and so now people feel compelled to see something special in it.

And I honestly can't understand why anyone would get up before dawn to go to a
5:30AM fish auction if they didn't work in the business and understood
Japanese.

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ekianjo
> And I honestly can't understand why anyone would get up before dawn to go to
> a 5:30AM fish auction if they didn't work in the business and understood
> Japanese.

You know why. Hipsters do it for bragging rights.

~~~
Larrikin
Or you know it's actually an interesting experience. Have you done it?

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ekianjo
Yes, I have done it. Not for bragging rights, just because I wanted to see
what it was about. Far from being impressed.

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yomly
I'd have to beg to differ.

As someone who is passionate about food, cooking and in particular, japanese
cuisine - going to Tsukiji was really an amazing experience.

Learning first hand from a wholesaler about the daily process of acquiring
stock which they go on to sell was fascinating. It's really astounding that
people are going there every morning and inspecting ~1000 tuna for a mere few
seconds, inspecting only by colour and occasionally the fattiness of the
tissue in their fingers. These split second assessments then lead to them
making a ballpark valuation of the stock which they take with them to auction
- the decisions affecting their livelihood.

If you have had the opportunity to sample sushi from across the spectrum of
quality - you'll know full well that there is good sushi and bad sushi.
Considering sushi is something like 7 ingredients (rice, mirin, soy sauce,
sugar, fish, vinegar, wasabi) the execution of the dish and the quality of the
ingredients are absolutely key. Being able to go to the heart of where
everything begins is really quite exciting.

~~~
ekianjo
> If you have had the opportunity to sample sushi from across the spectrum of
> quality - you'll know full well that there is good sushi and bad sushi.

I eat sushi often, and I have been to good and bad places alike. But as a
sushi amateur, I don't really grasp the passion of Japanese for tuna - it's
not even a fish they used to have in the first place in Japan, most of it is
not fresh and is just imported from the Mediterranean, and to my tongue tuna
(and I tried about every part of it) is nothing I crave for. I enjoy a LOT
more the local fishes they have in Japan. Again, it's probably just me, but I
find tuna utterly boring in mouth.

> the decisions affecting their livelihood.

Not really. Plenty of bad sushi joints stay afloat for years and do not lack
customers. I have even eaten at famous places near Tsukiji and I have found it
to be OK, but nothing at a spectacular level despite their reputation.

~~~
yomly
Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree - perhaps it's simply a matter of
different interests as I get pretty excited going to butcheries and equally
found Smithfields and Billingsgate (in London) pretty exciting. So maybe I'm
just a food nerd.

>Not really. Plenty of bad sushi joints stay afloat for years and do not lack
customers. I have even eaten at famous places near Tsukiji and I have found it
to be OK, but nothing at a spectacular level despite their reputation.

I'm not convinced your observation is really a valid response to what you've
highlighted. If your professional reputation revolved around buying and
wholesaling tuna, it naturally follows that your livelihood depends on the
decisions you make when you buy your stock. Maybe when you make a bad purchase
you can recoup some of the losses by selling to one of the bad sushi joints
that you mention, but you have still lost time and probably margin. You may
have also disappointed customers who may have been depending on your usual
quality stock. So for me, having any first hand insight into the nuance of
another person's way of life in interesting and made the visit to Tsukiji a
worthwhile experience.

Getting up once late at night is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things,
even if only to cross off a (hypothetically bad) experience.

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partycoder
One of the few fish markets selling whale meat. But the tourist community
keeps tolerating it.

update: And for some reason I get downvoted for denouncing something that is
against our best interest... whales regulate the oceanic carbon cycle. You
kill them and contribute to ocean acidification.

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Larrikin
I'm not for or against, I just don't understand the market. I had whale
prepared a few different ways in Japan and they only decent preparation was
thinly sliced and raw. It just tasted like a tougher, slightly fishier, worse
version of beef. I could understand it if it was significantly cheaper than
beef, since domestic and even imported beef can be pricey. But it's often
times more expensive than anything but the highest quality.

I expect the market will slowly collapse as the Japanese who grew up eating it
in school slowly die out. Most people my age had never even eaten it.

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sandworm101
It's an old people thing. Once upon a time whale meat was served in Japanese
schools. Those who grew up eating it want to eat it now. They are dying out
and the younger generations (us) have no taste for the meat.

Try finding anyone in the UK under 60 willing to eat tripe or jellied eels.

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hkmurakami
Never thought of the nostalgia factor but that makes sense. Fwiw the school
means served it because those regions (and the entire country) was too poor to
afford any other kind of meat.

I believe some traditional crafts use some kind of whale whiskers, but I
wouldn't imagine that is that big a factor.

