Tokyo’s landmark Tsukiji fish market gets ready to move

I have come to say a final goodbye to my favourite place on earth: Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. This is not merely the world’s largest fish market — it is the greatest food-themed attraction, selling everything from sea urchin’s gonads to bluefin tuna (one of which recently sold for a record £1.2m).

After years of prevarication, the whole shebang is relocating from its current location to a larger site on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay. Tsukiji will close either towards the end of next year or 2015. This, then, is likely my last chance to see it. I spend hours wandering the narrow alleyways, and watch men scythe their way with precision through fish flesh with metre-long maguro-bocho blades.