Fish Tales to Future of Science

In the last few blogs, I have been sharing about Japanese culture drawing parallels and highlighting contrasts. I would not do justice to my trip and writing if I didn’t speak about their cuisine and their futuristic thinking.

We woke up early next morning with a plan to visit the Tsukiji Market that contributes to world cuisines and the local economy. I wanted to visit Tsukiji Market for two reasons despite being a vegetarian. It is one of the largest fish markets in the world that auctions 400 varieties of seafood ranging from cheap seaweed, tasty sardines, healthy tuna, and expensive caviar to controversial whales across the world. Second, with plans to move this historic market operating since 1923, I wanted to capture and experience the mood before it becomes a postcard.

Did you know that Japan is one of the fish bowls of the world and also maintains one of the largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch? Auctions at Tsukiji fetch over 6 billion each year and the market employs 60,000 wholesalers, accountants, auctioneers, company officials, and distributors.

The busy inner market opens at 3 am in the morning to auction fresh catches between 5 am and 6.30 am. The mood inside is electric like the trading floor in a stock market and attracts a lot of visitors. With the Michelin Guide awarding Tokyo by far the most Michelin stars of any city in the world, the market gets best chefs come by to grab fruits der mer.

While walking around in the market, I was reminded of the lessons learnt from Stephen Lundin’s Fish Tales on energizing monotonous work places and lives by changing our attitude. Here at Tsukiji there seemed to be no dearth of positive energy and great attitude.

Once the auctions were over the inner market turns calm and visitors move to the outer market to taste the delicacies and shop for kitchen tools. Can you believe there are over 500 sushi restaurants in this area and all of them have live counters where food is cooked and served on the spot. Can it get any fresher?

I never knew the marine world could be is this colorful, but it was sad to see some of them waving at us to set them free. Though it was a great experience to watch and tour the market, the walk killed my appetite. While exiting, we sniffed each other to ensure we didn’t smell like the ones on display as we were headed to witness future of science at the Miraikan Science & Technology Museum.

In 70s and 80s Japan was a world leader in technology and manufacturing and I remember growing up playing with Nintendo games, watching movies on Sanyo VCR’s and my driving my first car (Toyota) in the US. With the birth of Silicon Valley and China turning into world’s manufacturing hub, Japan became the modern day Harappa Mohenjo-Daro. And that image was about to change as I walked into Miraikan – National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation.

A shiny ball hanging from the roof and a dozen flatbeds didn’t look like a proper ambiance for a Museum, but what was projected on the ball turned the comfortable beds into a beds of thorn.  A 15 minute movie on Searching Planet produced in collaboration with Google projected real-time data on climate change, wind patterns, temperature rise and depletion in forest cover and fauna. It instilled a sense of moral responsibility in us to save the planet and its species from extinction.

While the first exhibit made us a bit anxious about the future, what we saw on the next three floors gave us the hope and faith in science to fix global warming, exploring human body to detecting life threatening diseases like cancer through bio markers and curing crippling diseases like spine injury, to improving health care and interact with humanoids.

I’ve walked through science museums across the world where exhibits explain about the past and present, but this is the only museum where I saw tomorrow, today. At the end of the visit, I was convinced the promising sun was rising again in the land of rising sun.

On the next blog, let’s discover Tokyo from the top and explore its rarely seen underbelly.