TSUKIJI SEAFOOD MARKET RELOCATES

Tsukiji seafood market relocates

Tsukiji seafood market relocates to a new location in Toyosu which promises state-of-the-art facilities. Special doors will help keep halls cool and sterile, while gawping tourists will be confined to a viewing gallery behind glass.

Since 1935, Tokyo’s Tsukiji market has been at the centre of a world-class culinary capital, supplying Michelin-starred chefs and drawing tourists who queue for hours to glimpse the pre-dawn tuna auctions.

But this week Tsukiji will finally shut its doors and relocate from its outdated, central location to a new site in eastern Tokyo, after a lengthy and controversial process, hindered by pollution rows and construction delays.

Traders will sell their last trades at Tsukiji’s inner market on October 6, shutting up shop after the final tuna auction.

The mammoth move will begin on October 7, with vendors expected to file out of the market in a mass exodus to the new site, where the new operations are sheduled to start on October 11.

The relocation has been in the works for decades, driven in part by the rundown quarters where vendors sell 480 different types of seafood worth $14 million each day.

For some vendors, the changes will be a welcome improvement from conditions at Tsukiji, where throngs of visitors interfering with the actual business of the market have irked wholesalers.

But the move also has its detractors, with concerns about everything from Toyosu’s location, far from clients, to pollution at the new site.

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