Sleeping on the street was strange, but probably not as strange as it could have been. A policeman walked by, but appeared not to notice me. There was someone who jogged back and forth a few times, making a quick hissing sound as they breathed which I was able to hear from afar before I heard their footsteps, and that was a bit creepy. I fully awoke at about 3:30am with an unpleasant chill, and realized I had to get going if I was to make it to Tsukiji on time.

I had already walked back to Ebisu along the tracks, the stop where I had intended to transfer to the Hibiya line, so that meant following these tracks was no longer going to take me where I needed to go. It occurs to me now that I didn't think about following the Hibiya line tracks, but it might have been a subway anyway. I was still in an area where using my map was really not an option due to the lack of signs and landmarks. I knew that Tsukiji was still quite far, but I was feeling better and thought I just might be able to make it on foot, or at least make it a significant part of the distance so that a cab would not cost so much.

Reluctantly consulting that stupid map, I saw that Tokyo Tower, the city's rather pathetic smaller recreation of the Eiffel, was almost directly between me and Tsukiji, and since it was only half as far and probably still pretty tall, I might be able to see it from here and use it as a landmark to get at least that far. To look for it I walked up on one of the tall pedestrian overpass footbridges that were way too common and made it even more tiring just to walk around. I did some shaky calculations with the map about which direction it might be in. Sure enough, there it was! Well, it didn't seem quite right...it didn't seem bright enough. But surely this was it. Probably they turn off some of the lights late at night so as not to disturb people's sleep too much. So I headed on in that direction.

After several blocks I realized that the tower was a lot closer than I had originally thought. When I came upon one ridiculously long block I accidentally walked past it in that direction and had to double back. But these trifles didn't bother me. Not until I came to the tower a lot sooner than I had expected, and realized that it was not the tower at all, not even close. It was more like a very narrow smoke stack, a slim cylindrical pyramid, gray, with maybe 6 rows of lights at regular intervals going to the top. The building it was attached to was wholly unidentifiable, but I don't think it looked very industrial.

Why did I think this was Tokyo Tower? I was delirious, of course. Obvious, but it's not often that one gets to experience this combination of delirium and sudden awareness of it. I did some more shaky and desperate calculations with the map and figured that I definitely had not gone in the right direction, probably somewhere between 90 and 180 degrees off. Heck, perhaps I'd gone in a circle, the way one supposedly does when in the desert, and like I did in Central Park on the day of the blackout last year. The important thing was, I was rational enough to realize there was no fucking way I was making it to Tsukiji on foot. My mind and body both were drained, and the pain with each step was not diminishing. A cab really felt like the ultimate surrender, aside from probably being expensive. But after all Tsukiji was the one thing I had really come here for tonight, and what the hell else was I going to do?

I could swear the cab meter had an acceleration to it. It stayed at its initial setting for an incredible interval, but by the end of the trip the slightest movement seemed to be setting it off. The cabby was talkative and we got along pretty well with the I-speak-Japanese, he-speaks-English thing. The ride came to $30, more than I had spent to get to Tokyo, but oh well.

Right away it was obvious that Tsukiji was quite a place. I got there at about 4:45 and it seemed I had made it with plenty of time. All the fish vendors were still setting up their stalls, arrayed in a huge grid within a quarter-circle shaped building. Lots of people drove the goods around on these strange little vehicles, carts that had their whole mechanics contained within a cylinder near the front, behind which the driver stood, steering with an amazingly flimsy plastic wheel that was on top of the cylinder. It sometimes seemed like these drivers were maniacs, but after a while I realized they were quite expert at this specialized task, and they were patient but efficient when someone or something got in the way. Deep-frozen fish were cut on bandsaws. This was all pretty cool, but what I had really come to see were the tuna auctions.

After walking around pretty thoroughly I found them, in a closed section next to the last aisle of the main market area. There were small, dirty plastic windows in the cloth walls that closed it off, which allowed me to see what was going on and snap some poor pictures. In full effect were the rows and rows of giant tuna, deep frozen, and buyers walking around inspecting them. I was surprised then when a midwestern American woman with her son tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I knew how to get in there. I said I didn't think we could, but she then completely showed me up by asking a nearby market employee and being let in; I followed her.

Being there was quite a different experience from looking in. It also turned out to be the greatest concentration of tourists that I saw the whole time I was in Tokyo. I guess the word is out on this place. In any case, it was fascinating. There were hundreds of tuna, all in this one long hangar-like area. The frost created a mist over the floor. Each tuna had a couple of cuts in the same place so the flesh could be inspected. The buyers walked around with hooks used to slide the fish around, turn them over, and sometimes apparently just to see how it felt to jab them in. They got down close with flashlights and stared intently. Sometimes they picked out some flesh from a cut near the tail and rolled it between their fingers, and a couple of guys even chewed on it for a bit.

They called the auctions by ringing a bell, and the auctioneer would get up on a little stool and everyone casually gathered around, all standing between the tuna. I don't imagine it went too differently from auctions anywhere, but this was great to watch nonetheless. Each auctioneer had his own style. One did something I think I'd heard about, where the price calling was like a rising melody, punctuated by high notes at each change, resolving itself as the final price was called. Another flailed about so much that it was hard to imagine how he could see the subtle signals from the bidders, and used a lot of guttural grunts that gave the whole presentation a rather epileptic feel. It's always tough to know what a number means in these situations, whether "one" is one hundred, one thousand, one million. But I think I heard prices ranging from $100 to $1000 and probably more. The bidder signals varied as well, sometimes taking the form of thumbs up, sometimes turning the hand around, sometimes seeming to grip or tweak an imaginary small object. The coolest part was how they all looked at each other instead of the auctioneer. Everything seemed to be pretty routine, I didn't pick up on any of the dramatic reactions I'd read about when bidders did well or poorly. I was suitably careful in raising my camera, but I got the feeling they had no trouble distinguishing me from the participants.

The pleasantness of Tsukiji having met my expectations made me feel a lot better, despite the fact that I'd still been basically awake and walking for the last 14 hours, brief rests aside. I found the energy to do things properly and eat at one of the sushi places around the market, and it was tasty indeed. After that it was a half-awake drift across some of the Old Tokyo and Ginza area to the Yamanote line that would take me to the bus back to Kofu. I had one last bit of trouble as I attempted to walk around Shinjuku station to where I had to get the bus, and ended up walking in some kind of outward spiral with the station getting bigger and bigger. Finally I realized I'd gotten completely turned around again, and made it. I collapsed appropriately in bed upon my return.

As a New Yorker I don't like to take it lying down when a city threatens to overwhelm me and swallow me up. I haven't felt such a threat for as long as I can remember. But Tokyo, with its neverending nameless streets and vast array of neighborhoods, seemed to accomplish it effortlessly. I actually enjoyed being among the huge masses of people in Shinjuku and Shibuya, feeling less alone and, having no particular place to go, not being inconvenienced by the crowd's density. But they do all disappear somewhere at night, and then it's just you and the city.