Foodie Vacations

Uber-fresh sushi from one of the sushi stalls at Tsukiji fish market.

Do you pick your vacation destination based on food? I do. I find that if there's at least one thing I look forward to eating in a country, then I will have a good time vacationing there. The more things I want to eat in a certain locale, the more I want to go. If I don't have a food item to look forward to or I don't find any food items I enjoy while there, then the city/country usually jumps to my 'not interested in going back' list. For example, Denmark (sorry Todd). I have yet to find anything I like to eat there. And coupled with expensive prices, I have yet to have a good time being a foodie there. Let's stop dwelling on the negative and talk about a good food-cationing experience.

Picture 3:30am wake-up call. Get ready as best as you can in the dark and take a taxi to Tokyo's famous Tsukiji fish market. Get out of taxi around 4:30am only to be met by a security guard saying all the tuna auction tickets had been distributed for the day. Ugh!

All your sushi are belong to us.

So what to do? My friends and I wandered aimlessly for a bit. We were already up and it would be a shame to waste a trip to the fish market. It was still too early to browse the stalls so that leaves sushi! Yes, it's only logical. I  used foursquare to find the closest popular sushi stalls and we found two next to each other. Both had long lines already. We weren't the only ones who missed the tuna auction yay!! So we got in the shorter of the two lines. After waiting for an hour (which seemed like forever) we got in and I had the most amazing sushi in my life. And I don't even eat sushi with raw fish in the US! (I'm not a fan of the texture but when in Japan...) You think that's a lot of sushi at 6am in the morning? Nope there was more sushi than that. All-in-all it was 14 pieces for 3500 yen (~$35 USD). Glorious.