Oedo Sushi at Tsukiji Market, Tokyo

We landed in Tokyo on the morning of the very same day the worst typhoon to hit Japan since 1959 chose to land in Tokyo. I was warned by the sister not to go out, but we had been planning the sushi breakfast from the day we booked our air tickets. We were then advised to take an umbrella, which we grumbled about but took heed of. The sister has now moved from Roppongi to Shibuya, and we got to Tsujiki via the Hibiya line, instead of via the Toei Oedo line which would have deposited us at Tsukijishijo right outside the market proper. It's a bit further to get to the market from the Tsukiji station.
Notwitstanding the distance from the market, there are a lot of stalls that I suppose have capitalised on the Tsukiji name and have set up near the station.
One don stall along the main road looking very popular
We saw a side alley filled with stalls and decided to turn in. Seafood galore without the stuffiness of the market.
They had a huge variety of stalls there, including vegetables and pickles
It was extremely crowded - if I were the shopowners I would seriously be annoyed with the tourists like me who were snapping photos and not buying anything.This guy was slicing up his tuna
The kid was only interested in his snack
Selling fishcake-like stuffMentaiko galore
There was just too much to look at. The crabs looked fascinating
Biggest. Clams. Ever. After all the food porn, the husband and I decided to head to the small row of stalls outside the market which we had eaten at during our last trip.We remembered a stall with a super long queue, and since the queue wasn't as long this time, we decided it had to be worth a try.
The shopfront of Oedo - I take it the words above in red mean "seafood don"
Where Oedo's customers queue. It was getting colder and windier - this was around 1130am.Finally we made it to the shopfront, where we put in our orders with the chap standing next to the menu board.
It was both heavenly and agonising looking at the pictures and deciding what to have. This was the board below...
And this was the board above. Too many choices sometimes are not a good thing
From the outside looking in. There were maybe 10 counter seats in totalFinally after just under an hour of queuing, we made it inside. And our orders came almost immediately.
This was my mixed don with amaebi, kani, ika, hotate, ikura and some tuna for 1800Y - just about S$30. Another view of the bowl against the backdrop of the kitchen - this was absolutely fabulous. Everything was super fresh, sweet and succulent. It has been very difficult to go back to eating sushi in Singapore after tasting this.The husband had a mixed tuna bowl with different degrees of fattiness. I can't identify any lean part except maguro, and all I know is chutoro has an in-between fattiness and otoro is the fattiest. Leslie Tay has posted a guide on his facebook page differentiating the different tuna parts - akami being the leanest in the middle of the fish, chutoro in the middle, and toro is the outer fatty part that insulates the fish against the cold. I suppose the largest pieces must be akami.Another look at the tuna don rotated - it's so easy to understand why the Japanese love tuna and why salmon is so looked down on by them. The negitoro was my favourite part. This was also 1800Y.
And the story of how we survived the typhoon? We went shopping in Ginza after that, and because we took our own sweet time, we ended up back in Shibuya right in the middle of the storm. The wind completely massacred our umbrella rendering it useless, and we were soaked by the time we got home, no thanks to losing our way enroute. A most memorable start to our trip : )