If there is one thing that remains consistent from the old Tsukiji Fish Market and the new Toyosu Fish Market, that food and restaurants still are what bring people to the area.
If anything, the restaurant area is where I saw the most people and rightfully so, breakfast sushi will always be important, especially for true sushi connoisseurs who want the freshest fish.
Like Tsukiji of old, you can’t go wrong with the sushi at Toyosu Fish Market.
Of course, the biggest advantage of these restaurants is that it’s cleaner and much nicer, but it’s important to note that only several of the restaurants left Tsukiji, as the outer market and restaurants have stayed put at Tsukiji, while several made the move to Toyosu.
Either area, you will find quality sushi and many of these restaurants are open at 5:30 a.m. and close early afternoon, so the good news is you won’t face major crowds or major lines to get into a restaurant early in the morning.
With that being said, the restaurant owners are hurting as seafood consumption has decreased in Japan.
Even Tokyo governor Koike Yuriko had to make a statement at her weekly news conference: “It’s a fact that the number of fish caught and consumed in Japan is decreasing and the amount of seafood bought and sold at wholesale markets continues to decline. Under these circumstances, it’s important that we work to establish the Toyosu market as a hub for seafood distribution in the eyes of producers, consumers and traders alike.”
If anything, the restaurants are definitely the livelier spots to visit at Toyosu Fish Market.
But I know a lot of people will ask, is it just as good as when things were at Tsukiji Fish Market a few years ago? And the answer is no. Not at all.
What made Tsukiji Fish Market what it is, was the ability to walk through stall to stall and may it be to shop but to also enjoy what was offered at the market, take a short walk to another restaurant or stall selling different types of food or merchandise and more.
Not so much with Toyosu Fish Market, because everything is so spread out, you get to the restaurants, you lose that variety of having dozens up dozens of shops/food stalls, restaurants.
Again, you can still experience that at the outer market at Tsukiji, but with Toyosu, the advantages are more for the vendors who are selling and trading. Better technology, cleaner facility, but time will tell to see what the Fish Market will bring and how things are finalized in 2022 or 2023.
While Tsukiji had a multitude of shops and just a walk away from Ginza, with TeamLab Planets, Toyosu Pit and a few other locations right nearby, hopefully more of these commercial locations will entice people to visit Toyosu Fish Market.
But for the first year, as much as I highly anticipated visiting Toyosu Fish Market in the past few years, it was not as enjoyable as I would hoped, but if anything, having to eat at a restaurant (in this case Sushi Dokoro Yamazaki) made my trip to the market worthwhile.
