Six twenty-nine. The market has already been awake for hours by the time I get here, which tells you something about who is really running this city. I am not a morning person. Tokyo does not care.
The stall I found has no chairs. Just a counter, worn smooth, and a woman behind it slicing tuna with a knife longer than my forearm. She doesn't ask what I want. She just makes it. Rice still warm underneath, fish cold and almost sweet on top. I eat standing, the way everyone else does, breath visible in the air between bites.
Around me: crates of ice sliding off trucks, someone shouting a number I don't understand, the wet slap of rubber boots on concrete. Vendors in white aprons move like they've done this every day of their lives, because they have. Nobody is performing for anyone. That's the part I like. No one here has an audience in mind.
My camera stays in the bag longer than usual. Some mornings you eat first, shoot later. The tuna doesn't wait, and neither does the light, thin and gray, sliding sideways between the stalls. Eventually I get the shot: steam off a coffee cup, a hand reaching for change, the blur of someone already moving to the next stall before I've finished framing.
This is not a market that was built for visitors. It just happens, at this hour, in this cold, whether you show up or not. I like that kind of place. It doesn't need me. I just get to stand here, plate in hand, and watch it happen. Bom dia, Tokyo. You're up before I am, every single time.
