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Everything You Need to Know About Shopping For, Making and Eating Sushi in Tokyo

Oct. 04, 2016
3 min read
Brian at Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan
Everything You Need to Know About Shopping For, Making and Eating Sushi in Tokyo
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Once you try sushi in Japan, you'll realize that what you've been eating your whole life in the US (with few exceptions) isn't really sushi. While I've been an avid consumer of sushi my whole life, on this trip to Japan, I wanted to learn how to shop for it and make it myself — I'm not a great chef, but it's hard to burn the house down making sushi!

I was lucky enough to have Chef Masakazu Ishibashi show me around the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest in the world. After picking out a fresh red snapper, it was time for me to head to sushi school and master the art of creating the perfect sushi dish, a process that involved scaling, filleting and deboning the fish, preparing my ingredients and rolling it all to perfection on a bamboo sheet — the results of all my hard work were delicious!

To top it all off, we met up with Chef Ishibashi again later that night and had an incredible dinner at his popular Ginza restaurant, Sushi Ichi — you can also find locations in Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta.

Keep in mind that access to the Tsukiji Fish Market is pretty limited — only 120 visitors get to see the fish auctions every day — so it's best to go with a guide. Viator offers an experience similar to what I did for $140 per person, including a tour of the fish market and a sushi-making class.

Check out the video below for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make the perfect sushi dish, from picking out fresh tuna at the world's biggest fish market to serving it up Tokyo-style.

For more great TPGtv videos in our new, shorter format, check out the first 14 videos from our second season:

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Featured image by Brian at Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan