Shiogama Wholesale Fish Market

You choose the fish at the stalls, the rice at stall 6, and you put the bowl together yourself.

A shed at the port, the stalls in rows, and more than twenty that sell nothing but tuna. You go round the ones displaying the ‘MY海鮮丼’ sign and buy the slices you want; then at stall number 6 you get the rice (400 yen for two hundred grams, 500 for three hundred, 600 for four hundred) and build your own kaisen-don on top, the bowl of rice covered with raw fish. You spend between one thousand and two thousand yen each.

A wholesale fish market that is also open to people outside the trade: you buy at wholesale prices, on the Shinhama quay north-east of the town centre. It opened in 1965 with 367 stalls; the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 reduced it to 147, and today 93 are still trading, plus eleven places to eat, including a grill corner that is closed from December to March. Tuna boats from half of Japan dock at Shiogama, from Hokkaidō down to Kyūshū and Okinawa: the port is among the top in the country for fresh tuna landed and ranks first nationally for bigeye tuna, which is sold here under the ‘Sanriku Shiogama higashimono’ brand.

ℹ️ Open Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 6:00 to 13:00; Saturday, Sunday, Monday and public holidays from 6:00 to 14:00. Closed on Wednesdays, from 1 to 4 January and from 14 to 16 August. The stalls where you can eat open at 6:30 and close at midday on the three weekdays, at one o'clock on the other days. ⚠ Many guides still give the opening time as three in the morning: the hours changed in July 2024 and the market's own hours are the ones that apply. Entry is free, but credit cards are not accepted: you need cash. About 500 free parking spaces. From JR Hon-Shiogama Station it is a quarter of an hour on foot, or five minutes on the Shio-navi shuttle, to the ‘Gyoshi Oroshiuriichiba’ shuttle stop. You spend an hour or an hour and a half there.

🚉 Higashi-Shiogama · 15 min walk

Sources: nakaoroshi.or.jp · nakaoroshi.or.jp · rurubu.jp · skywardplus.jal.co.jp

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