Tokyo Day 5 - Tsukiji Fish Market and Meiji Shrine

Tsukiji Fish Market is the creme de la creme of palengkes (markets). They are known for their early morning seafood auctions, and tourists line up for hours to eat in the famous sushi restaurant there. However, JM and I were not ready to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to eat sushi so we settled for having lunch there instead.

You can easily get lost inside the market as there are a lot of things to see. We settled for a small sushi shop along the alley to have our lunch. We had some salmon, tuna and a platter of mixed sashimi. Everything tasted really good; I may be biased, as I really like eating sashimi. 

After lunch, we decided to try our luck again by visiting the Meiji Shrine so we hopped on the train to Harajuku. Upon reaching the station, we realized that it was already near the entrance of the Meiji Shrine compared to the route that we took on Day 2. It was a very cold day and it started to snow a little; coming from a tropical country, seeing ice fall from the sky is truly magical.

Meiji Shrine is dedicated to the late Emperor Meiji and his wife. It was quite a walk from the entrance to the actual shrine but there will be a lot of photo opportunities for you while walking, one of which is the famous barrels of sake. I tried to search a little and found out that the decoration of barrels (kazaridaru) signifies connection between gods and people in Japan.

There is no entrance fee to get to the shrine and it is open from sunrise to sunset with no closing days.

We spent a few hours looking around the complex and taking in the sights. We left just before dark and went back to Takeshita Street for some shopping.