Tour Groups Allowed at Tsukiji Tuna Auctions
It looks like a solution has been found to the crowds of foreign tourists who used to disrupt tuna auctions at Tsukiji fish market:
Tsukiji fish market, part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, on Monday once again began accepting visitors to its popular frozen tuna auction–but with a significant new rule. The Tokyo metropolitan government, which oversees the market, now limits the number of auction visitors to 140 a day on a first-come, first-served basis.
A magnet for foreign tourists, Tsukiji market has been in the headlines recently over some visitors’ obstructive behavior, such as using flash photography in prohibited areas and touching fish–some people have even kissed them. In 2008, the metropolitan government began allowing sightseers to view the auction only from a designated area.
Nevertheless, the auction continued to be plagued by its growing popularity. Metropolitan authorities finally decided to temporarily close it to the public after more than 500 people crowded into the makeshift observation spot, which has a capacity of only 70, on April 5.
As you can see from the FTV spot embedded in this post, the visitors were given special multi-lingual instructions to make sure they followed the rules. Although one guy accidentally found his way through the barriers and a few people seem to have violated the “no flash photography” rule, there were no outrageous acts of rudeness, such as licking fish.
While this will probably solve the problem of tourists disrupting auctions and generally annoying workers, it won’t solve Tsukiji’s bigger problems. Recent years have seen a decline in sales for Tsukiji, with supermarkets and other stores preferring to skip the middleman and make direct supply deals with fishermen. Foreign tourists like to take pictures, but they they don’t buy much fish.
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