H-Bomb’s Saturday Photo, week 27: giant fishes in Tokyo

Happy Saturday! I had a good reason for not getting this weekly photo up yesterday. I’m currently chilling on a Boeing 747-400, 35,000 feet above the North Atlantic, headed to Frankfurt. From there, I’ll catch a connecting flight to Moscow. As you know, I have big plans for the next couple of weeks — for both karaoke and sightseeing — in Russia, the Ukraine, and Moldova. But this trip almost collapsed at the last minute, due to a booking error by United Airlines that left me ticketless on the eve of my departure — even though I’d made my flight reservations all the way back in July 2012. So last night I had to spend hours on the phone with, and tweeting with, United customer service agents. I’ll have more to say at a later time about the bad experience that I suffered at the hands of United; but finally, at about 11:00 pm last night, they got me rebooked on the flights that I should have been on all along.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to share with you this week’s featured image from my prior travels. That image comes from Tokyo, Japan. One of the most unusual things I did there was to visit the morning tuna auction in that city’s famed Tsukiji fish market. The giant tuna that are auctioned off can weigh hundreds of pounds, and their prices are commensurate with their size; earlier this year, a Bluefin tuna at Tsukiji fetched a record $1.78 million US. Here, you can get a sense of just how supersized those fish can be:

I had to wake up at 4:45 a.m. to see this auction, and it was so worth it! I’ve never seen anything like it.

This photo was taken during my visit to Japan in April 2008.