Category Archives: japan

Sights and sounds of the Tsukiji Fish Market

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5X5 edit: Tuna Life After Death:

Extended Raw Footage Edit:

I lived in Tokyo for about a year from ’99 to 2000, but somehow never visited the Tsukiji Fish Market, though I realize now it wasn’t far off the route I took to work every day. I even lived near Tokyo Bay.
Anyway, on my recent multi-day stopover in Tokyo, I finally did it. I got one of the first trains of the morning over to the market. I was advised to go straight to the back end as early as possible if I wanted to catch any of the auctions of giant tuna.
I thought about editing this footage into some kind of proper film, even an educational one, and I might yet, but for now I think raw footage tells the story.
Plus, the market has been extremely well-documented in recent years, so I didn’t think further explanation was needed.
If you want to read up more on the market, besides Wikipedia, here’s a few links:
- book: The Fish Market at the Center of the World
- Vanity Fair article by Nick Tosches
- I know I’ve seen a few good videos with Tsukiji scenes on Vimeo. Here is one.

Update: I saw the Cove the other day. If you’ve seen it, you might recognize the lengthy Tsukiji tuna auction time lapse scenes 2/3rds of the way through the movie. In the years, there’s obviously a lot more questions about how long this tuna trade can be sustained. It’s truly boggling to think of this amount of huge fish being caught every day.

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Shinjuku Station One Minute

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Shinjuku Station, in central Tokyo, is said to be the busiest train station in the world. In 2007, the station was used by an average of 3.64 million passengers per day. The station has more than 200 exits. On Wednesday November 21st, 2007, around 8 PM, I filmed one of these exits for exactly 1 minute.

A few observations about this minute: Nobody looks at me at all as I stand there filming. There’s a pause of about two seconds in the middle where no one walks through, but otherwise there’s certain seconds where six people walk through. I love how adept the people are – there’s only 1 or 2 out of about a 100 people who even slightly fumble with their tickets, while there’s a few people who almost enter and then hesitate and walk away.

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Shibuya Sunday Morning

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In Tokyo, the last train’s around midnight. Taxi costs are extortionate. But clubs and bars stay open until 5 AM (or later), when the train service resumes. On weekend mornings, there’s a rush hour in reverse, as the revelers and the stranded spill out into the streets.

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Hazakura in Slow Motion

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Yesterday, despite warnings to go outside because of the rain mixed with yellow wind of China, I walked up the small mountain behind my apartment. It disappointed me to realize that all up the mountain there were cherry blossom trees, where the cherries had already blossomed, and were already falling off and scattered across the ground. It is a beautiful to see the cherry blossom petals scattered, like a spring snow — but already they were really scattered, really days past their peak.

I somehow missed it. Japanese obsess over cherry blossoms to the point that you get sick of hearing about them, when you live there. I’ve watched NHK (Japan’s national network) a lot lately, and seen all the reports of the blossoms. I guess they bloom in Seoul and Tokyo at about the same time.

The Japanese word for cherry blossom is “sakura.” There is even a word for a cherry blossom in its later stage, when it has leafed and the blossoms are beginning to fall — that is “hazakura.” There is a certain type of person who prefers the “hazakura” to the “sakura” — it’s like the first glimpse of beauty compared to the last glimpse of beauty — which is better?

(This footage was taken about one year ago in Kamakura, Japan — a very cool little town an hour down the coast from Tokyo. The town is famous as the hometown of director Ozu and for its gigantic outdoor Buddha statue.)

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Water and lines

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I filmed several minutes of water textures and surfaces in the Hiroshima Peace Garden. It’s been a few years, and I can no longer recall the exact significance of the water works. I love these textures, and I might try to do something more elaborate with them at some point. For now, I’ve just spent 45 minutes or so trying different combinations in Final Cut Pro, but don’t yet have a specific work in mind.
The individual water sequence clips should also be really good for VJ footage.

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Genbaku Dome

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Here is the Genbaku Dome at night. It was over this building that the atom bomb detonated in Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, killing over 70,000 people instantly. While the surrounding area was completely devastated, this building remained standing. The building does have such a spooky feel. A hollowed out shell that looks ancient. The moon looks on indifferently.

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Let Lafcadio Hearn Be The Judge

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This electronic sign was filmed in front of the Shimane prefectural office. The basic message is: “Takeshima Island belongs to Japan.” The island is known as Dokdo in Korea. Koreans insist the islands belong to them. In the weeks and months leading up to the day when I filmed this (March 2005), the issue had been in the international news. Here’s a link here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4352923.stm

Since I’ve lived in Japan and now live in South Korea, I have to admit the dispute interests me. Both sides have convincing arguments. And considering the country’s are relatively small (more so Korea, not so much Japan) and have fishing cultures, it’s no wonder this is a hot-button issue. For its part, my own country, Canada, has its own island disputes with some of its Northern neighbors.

In the above film, we see again this controversial sign, as well as the home and a statue of Lafcadio Hearn. One of Matsue’s (the capital of Shimane prefecture) claims to fame is that it was the home of Lafcadio Hearn, one of the most celebrated non-Japanese to have ever lived in Japan. In the 19th century, he translated numerous Japanese works into English, and did much to spread Japanese culture to the world beyond.

Lafcadio Hearn with his wife, Koizumi Setsu

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