Tsukiji Market, the biggest wholesale market in the world, is being relocated for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

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.

[The New York Times]

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…

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Kidding aside, I should visit before it’s gone forever

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