vacay day 8 : fish, electronics and sumo.

woke up bright and early (4am!) to go watch the tuna auctions at the tsukigi fish market, then wandered around the wholesale part of the market taking pictures. the place is insanely huge, and even though i'd been before as a kid, it was still quite and experience. around 7a, we stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall sushi joint called yamazaki right by the market and had some amazingly fresh (and new!) sushi. the new stuff we tried was the shako (a sort of clam/shrimp? with roe still in it), akagai (red clam) and ootoro (same as toro, but "prime" or a fattier better piece - holy cow it was so freaking good!!!!).

we wandered akihabara, aka electric town, for a bit. it was mind-boggling of course. found a pretty awesome collection of lomography cameras at one place too. they literally had everything (holgas - including stereo, pinhole and tlr; dianas; etc etc). for lunch we stopped at a department store food court, where i felt a bit ashamed because we went to a chinese place called xi'an. i ordered their dan dan toshomen, at which point i saw the chef making SHAVED NOODLES for it!! i guess japanese toshomen = chinese dow xiao mien. absolutely worth it, and SO GOOD.

we spent the afternoon at the sumo tournament going on in tokyo right now. very interesting stuff, and it got progressively more interesting the higher the rank of the wrestlers we saw.

final stop of the night was ikebukuro to try out a ramen place called tonchin, which is famous for their tonkotsu-style ramen. you order and pay at a little vending machine, then hand the ticket to a waiter while you wait for a seat, then when you sit down there is little-to-no wait for your food. and oh-em-gee, that ramen was so freaking good. i love japan for so many reasons, but food is really up there.

ALSO, update on the bug bites. my left leg is INSANE. yesterday, all the bites were really swollen, and became bruises. today, the swelling is down on the bites of my left leg, but my ankle is completely swollen up (ie, i have a cankle, ugghhh) and the best i can deduce is that the swelling / bad blood flow has just moved south due to gravity (especially with all the walking we've been doing), or i sprained it a little (or both!). it's gross. i hate this. stupid effing mexican mosquitoes.