Fishmonger, whoremonger, costermonger, ironmonger, hmmm can’t think of any more. Anyway it is Saturday so I go to my er fishmonger. I use this term as it suits the enterprise well. It is essentially a staging post between the fishing boats, the fish shops and fish bits in supermarkets. Its main function is to make sashimi. I am very encouraged that it is all done by hand.

Sashimi ore

The guys spend a lot of time sharpening their knife on whetstones under a jet  of water from the tap. They then slice up the huge tuna with great skill and accuracy.

Sashimi Sid

I like it here.

Sashimi Simon

We eat a lot of this around here.

So the main goal of the fishmongery is to produce sashimi but they also sell random fish that also come in with the tuna.

You just buy what is there. It is different each time.

I get a couple of these.

You get a lot of these just in front of my house. On the sea side rather than on the road side.

This morning was trash collection – big boy trash collection – cans, bottles, both glass and plastic. There is an old lady who wheels a wheelbarrow in advance of the garbage truck snaffling all the aluminum cans. She is very old, very bent  and gnarled. She is snaffling my cans as  I carry out the empty bottles, which of course takes some time. I say “Ohayogozaimasu.” She points to my knee and says, “Daijobu deska?”  I say, “Daijobu des, aregato gozaimasu.”  She gives me a huge smile and says stuff that I do not understand but take to mean, “May yer lum keep blithely reeking” and wanders off to push her barrow through streets both broad and narrow. She clearly knew about my knee op. What else does she know about me? What else does everybody know about me?

Anyway back at the fishmonger I buy a wonderful octopus. If you get there early the chances of getting Tako are higher. They always have frozen but you know.

Just a small one today. I am slimming

A restaurant is part of the mongery. The food is the best in the world. I mean really the best in the world- not just the best in the world around here. Obviously this is a subjective judgement but I like fish just off the boat served simply, soup, sashimi, fried, with seaweed, tempura, black squid, cold tea. $10 no pretension.