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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Tsukiji is fascinating, but also a bit sad. After visiting there I am amazed that there are any fish left in the sea. The scale of the place is truly mind-boggling. I kept imagining a sign hanging over the door that said, "All hope abandon ye fish who enter here."

But the sushi in the nearby restaurants was the best I've ever had before or since.

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For those who are curious, Sushi Dai is considered hands down the best sushi place inside the Tsukiji market. However, the wait is typically 4+ hours. If you get in line even before the first trains, the wait can be as short as 90 minutes. Anything shorter than that is blind luck.

Daiwa Sushi is typically considered second. Lines are typically around 45 minutes long.

To be honest, to most Western mouth the difference between Sushi Dai and any random joint in the same area is negligible. We had delicious sushi at 8 in the morning in another place, and it was still the best I've ever had (and I tried my fair share of sushi joints in London and Paris, as well as Tokyo and Kyoto).

Honestly, if you are in Tokyo for a short period, it doesn't make sense to waste 6 hours in a queue for sushi, go elsewhere.

The fun part is standing for an hour in a queue that leads to the small street so you can queue some more to the actual place :)

But the other restaurants (if you can call them that) in the same street are amazing too. I doubt I'd be able tell a difference between them.

Edit: for people who haven't seen this great establishment, here's the queue and the view on the restaurants: https://tinyurl.com/j8efukr

Be careful not to get run over by those fish carrying mini-truck things while queueing in that small street! :)

I ate at Sushi Dai the morning after Fukushima.

A group from the hostel I was staying at spent the night at a manga cafe near Tsukiji that night. No line that morning.

I waited 6 hours in line for Sushi Dai. Food was amazing.

> But the sushi in the nearby restaurants was the best I've ever had before or since.

I was coming here to say just this. Best sushi I've ever had and will likely ever have. Period.

The sushi my brother and I had across the street from the market was one of the best things I've ever eaten at all. My brother got real serious afterward, gave me a hug, and thanked me for sharing such a great meal with him. That's how good the sushi is there.

Yeah, the place I went was inside the market and was only open for breakfast. It was tiny, had maybe 8 seats at a counter. I know almost no Japanese. A lady sat me and the chef on the other side of the counter put sushi in front of me until I said I was full. The lady promptly dumped me out of my seat so someone from the line outside could come in and eat.

I'm not even sure of 1/2 the stuff I ate, but it was all delicious.

Slightly off topic, but Tsukiji is also home to my favorite Kaiseki restaurant. It's not in the market itself, but it's an amazing experience. It's a typical 3 hour or so experience, the chef is conversational, interesting, and fluent in English. The presentation is on par with other Kaiseki restaurants I've been to, but the consistency of amazing food across every course was unmatched.

[0] http://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1313/A131301/13119576/

My sadness for sea overexploitation is also easily overcome by sushi.

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