3 Best Sights in Tsukiji, Tokyo

Enjoying a sushi breakfast at this famous fish market is an integral part of any trip to Tokyo, even now that its famed inner market has been relocated to a nearby island in Tokyo Bay. If you have time for only one market, this is the one to see as the shopkeepers maintain the feeling of the original Tsukiji area. The three square blocks between the former site of Tokyo Central Wholesale Market and Harumi-dori have scores of fishmongers, plus shops and restaurants. Stores sell pickles, tea, crackers and snacks, cutlery (what better place to pick up a professional sushi knife?), baskets, and kitchenware. Hole-in-the-wall sushi bars here have set menus ranging from ¥1,000 to ¥2,500; look for the plastic models of food in glass cases out front. The area includes the row of little counter restaurants, barely more than street stalls, under the arcade along the east side of Shin-Ohashi-dori, each with its specialty. Come hungry and be sure to stop for maguro donburi—a bowl of fresh raw tuna slices served over rice and garnished with bits of dried seaweed.

Built in the mid-1600s to house and honor a Shinto spirit that calmed the waters of Tokyo Bay, this little shrine is worth a stop on your way to Tsukiji Outer Market. The name of the shrine literally means "protection from waves," and it is an unofficial guardian shrine for the marketplace and its workers.

Disaster seemed to follow this temple, which is an outpost of Kyoto's Nishi Hongan-ji. Since it was first located here in 1657, it was destroyed at least five times, and reconstruction in wood was finally abandoned after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The present stone building dates from 1935. It was designed by Chuta Ito, a pupil of Tokyo Station architect Tatsuno Kingo. Ito's other credits include the Meiji Shrine in Harajuku; he also lobbied for Japan's first law for the preservation of historic buildings. Ito traveled extensively in Asia; the evocations of classical Hindu architecture in the temple's domes and ornaments were his homage to India as the cradle of Buddhism. But with stained-glass windows and a pipe organ as well, the building is nothing if not eclectic. Talks in English are held on the third Saturday of the month at 5:30.