Tsukiji Market, the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and also the largest wholesale food market of any kind, is a very important part of Japanese business and culture. Located in central Tokyo, it was also a big attraction for tourists.
However, the market will soon be relocated to give the city a makeover:
Soon it will be gone. The city is planning to spend $4.5 billion to relocate the market — nicknamed Tsukiji for the neighborhood that surrounds it — to a modern, climate-controlled distribution center on a manufactured island in three years. The move is part of a broader face-lift Tokyo is planning before the 2020 Olympics.
For the many who have opposed the change, the relocation will bring not only the loss of a historic, 78-year-old marketplace, but also another blow to a vanishing way of life.
So what are they making way for?
Officials say they want to redevelop the market’s approximately 50 acres of land — valued in the billions of dollars — into high-rise apartment buildings and a tunnel that would connect Tokyo to the islands that will house new Olympic sites.
This must be Jiro’s nightmare…
Kidding aside, I should visit before it’s gone forever
