the Beginning of Autumn

立秋のあとが暑い

立秋とは秋の始めの事ですが、立秋を過ぎてもまだまだ暑い日が続きます。それどころか、その後に最高気温が記録される事が多いくらいです。毎年、８月８日ごろに立秋を迎えますが、この日以降の暑さを残暑と呼ぶのが正しいと言われています。しかし、体感的にはどこか違和感を感じます。でもこの頃になると、海水浴場では大きな波のうねりがあらわれたり電気クラゲに刺される人が増えたり、公園では秋の花の萩や桔梗が咲き乱れたりしていますので、何となくもう秋かなと感じます。やっぱり太陽の運行は性格なんですね。

the Beginning of Autumn 

Rissyu means the beginning of autumn but even after this day it continues to be hot. In fact, after Rissyu the highest temperature of the year is often recorded. The day is around August 8 every year and it is said the heat after this day is formally called zansyo(Lingering heat) . But when we say what we feel, it is a little bit different. Around this time of the year there appears a big wave near the swimming beach and more and more people are stung by electric jellyfish. In the park autumn flowers such as Japanese bellflowers are beginning to bloom. So I somehow feel autumn has already com. The movement of the sun is more accurate, don't you think so?

Bon Dance and Yukata

盆踊り・浴衣姿

盆踊りの中でも特に有名な者は、徳島の阿波踊りなどですが全国各地に各種の盆踊りがあります。外国人観光客の間でも盆踊りは人気があり、まためずらしがられて、踊りの中に飛び入りする外人さんもいるほどです。

各種の盆踊りは、人々が円を描きながら踊るものと更新しながら踊るものとに二大別されるそうです。いずれにしても、浴衣姿がとてもよく似合います。浴衣を機内と、様になりませんし、盆踊りらしく見えないから不思議です。このため、盆踊り用の特別な浴衣を持ってくる人もいますし、大勢の人がそろいの浴衣をきることもあります。外国の人たちにも浴衣はよく似合いますよ。

Bon Dance and Yukata

There are many kinds of bon dances all over the country but Awa-odori in Tokusima Prefecture is especially famous among them. It is so popular among foreign tourists that some of them even join the people who are dancing. Maybe it seems curious to them.

A variety of bon dances are grouped into two distinct types. In one type people dance in a circle and in the other people parade dancing and move forward. In either case, people look nice in yukata. It is strange that if people don't wear yukata, they don't look nice and it doesn't look like a typical bon dancing. So some people have special yukata for a bon dancing. In some cases, a lot of people wear the same yukata in a group. I am sure foreign people look nice in yukata.

Urabon

盂蘭盆

盂蘭盆を略して盆とかお盆といっています。この日は、祖先の冥福をいのり、飢えに苦しんでいる人たちに食べ物を施す日として昔からの伝統行事になっています。

ですから、各種のごちそうを、まず祖先の霊に供えて、その後にごちそう鵜を欲しい人たちや野獣や野鳥にまで自由時分け与えるのが昔からの習わしなのです。でも、ゆたかになった現代では、ごちそうをもらってかえる人がすくなくなったので、お寺の墓前にごちそうを供える人は少なくなりました。食べ物を持参する事を禁止するお寺も増えています。

お盆参りや僧侶の檀家まわりなどが、いまでも行われています。地方によってお盆の日がちがいますが、一般に７月１５日や８月１５比に行うところが多いようです。

Urabon 

We call "Urabon" "Bon" or "Oo-bon" for short. It has been an old traditional event. On this day we pray that our ancestors' souls may rest in peace and give food and drink to people who are hungry.

 That is why we first offer a variety of dishes to the spirit of our ancestors and after that give them to people who want them or even to wild animals or birds. This custom has been practiced for a long time. But today, richer than before, fewer people want to bring back those dishes so fewer people offer dishes in front of their tombs at temple. More and more temples even ask their visitors not to bring food.

Even today, people visit family cemeteries and priests visit their supporters. Generally in most districts the event is held on July 15 or August 15, but in others it is held on other days.S

20110519

My Experiences
While in high school, I travelled overseas to see foreign culture for the first time. That is when I started to interest in architectures. Impressed with the beautyful building appearance and townscape, So I majored department of architecture in college. And I joined real estate agent to be based in Tohoku region right after graduation. Working for the company for a year, I obtained important management and design skill stage by stage. My major responsibilities were customer enhancement and asset liquidation project, sales team management, and making new product development .

My initial job was a sales rep to solicit various types of people to accept our real estate. Not only ordinary people, Those included  government and municipal officespublic agencies, hotels, bars, restaurants, and self-employed shops and so forth. I called on dozens of people every day and night (because bars were open at night!) for two years. Attaining top sales in my 6 month, I learned the importance of initiative and tenacity. In this way, I acquired basic sales skills during this period.

My next job was a sales team leader managing a group of 4 reps for half year. In this position, I found that doing and having others do were too different things. Of course, the sales knowhow I had gained in the previous experience helped me actually guide them on the job. But, the more important thing was bringing maximum results as a team, which I learned by trial and error. In this manner, I learned valuable leadership skills during this period.

My last job was a product developer and designer to build mobile phone with other firms. After a year in sales, I changed my job. In the following two years, I successfully developed with several new product . This was a great opportunity to learn how a global company operated from a productive viewpoint. As a result, I developed practical development & design skills during this period.

20110521

Steve Jobs Speech Script_03

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

20110520

Steve Jobs Speech Script_03_01

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

20110519

Steve jobs speech script02_02

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

20110518

Steve Jobs Speech Script_02_01

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

20110517

Steve Jobs Speech Script_01_01

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

20110516

My Idols
We often emulate our heroes. Indeed, having a role model motivates us to achieve tough goals in our life. The same applies to our performance in the workplace. I have three idols who continue to help me overcome challenges. Namely, they are Ichiro Suzuki, Steve Jobs, and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

For starters, I was impressed with Ichiro Suzuki when he started to play in Major League Baseball as the first Japanese outfield player. As we all know, a number of Japanese players have crossed the Pacific ocean in the past decade. While some of them performed extremely well, none seems greater than Ichiro in that “Area 51” changed our perception (that Japanese baseball players were not competent enough to play in MLB). Thus, I greatly admire him as a courageous forerunner.

Furthermore, I was intrigued by Steve Jobs’ entrepreneurship in the business domain. He was not always successful in his career. For instance, he was once ousted from Apple, which he had founded; Likewise, he suffered from cancer, which was “miraculously” cured. Despite these and other adversities, he has achieved at least two feats in the past two decades: the successful establishment of Pixar (Animation Studios) and the remarkable revival of Apple. Therefore, I deeply respect him as an unparalleled entrepreneur.

Lastly, I was moved by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche who introduced super-human thought to people . It is often said that Nietzsche's thought is The philosophy of life. In fact, his super-human thought has influenced many famous activists including Soseki Natume, Martin Heidegger. Nietzsche’s work lead us to a importance that abandon old fashioned value and make a brandnew value judgement for yourself from zero-base. Consequently, I strongly venerate him as an exceptional philosopher.

In conclusion, I am attracted to pioneers. Whether an athlete, businessperson, or philosopher, they paved the way that other people eagerly followed. I wish to explore a new field and reach an unconquered pinnacle someday in the future.

50110515

Early Japan (until 710) part_02
The emperor was ruler of Yamato Japan and resided in a capital that was moved frequently from one city to another. However, the Soga clan soon took over the actual political power, resulting in the fact that most of the emperors only acted as the symbol of the state and performed Shinto rituals.

Due to friendly relations to the kingdom of Kudara (or Paikche) on the Korean peninsula, the influence from the mainland increased strongly.

Buddhism was introduced to Japan in the year 538 or 552 and was promoted by the ruling class. Prince Shotoku is said to have played an especially important role in promoting Chinese ideas.

He also wrote the Constitution of Seventeen Articles about moral and political principles. Also the theories of Confucianism and Taoism, as well as the Chinese writing system were introduced to Japan during the Yamato period.

In 645, Nakatomi no Kamatari started the era of the Fujiwara clan that was to last until the rise of the military class (samurai) in the 11th century.

In the same year, the Taika reforms were realized: A new government and administrative system was established after the Chinese model. All land was bought by the state and redistributed equally among the farmers in a large land reform in order to introduce the new tax system that was also adopted from China.

20110515

Early Japan (until 710) part_01

During the Jomon Period (13000 BC to 300 BC), the inhabitants of the Japanese islands were gatherers, fishers and hunters. Jomon is the name of the era's pottery.

During the Yayoi Period (300 BC to 300 AD), the rice culture was imported into Japan around 100 BC. With the introduction of agriculture, social classes started to evolve, and parts of the country began to unite under powerful land owners.

Chinese travellers during the Han and Wei dynasties reported that a queen called Himiko (or Pimiku) reigned over Japan at that time.

The Yayoi period brought also the introduction of iron and other modern ideas from Korea into Japan. Again, its pottery gave the period its name.


By the beginning of the Kofun Period (300 - 538), a center of power had developed in the fertile Kinai plain, and by about 400 AD the country was united as Yamato Japan with its political center in and around the province of Yamato (about today's Nara Prefecture).

The period's name comes from the large tombs (kofun) that were built for the political leaders of that era. Yamato Japan extended from Kyushu to the Kinai plain, but did not yet include the Kanto, Tohoku and Hokkaido.

20110518

Steve Jobs Speech Script_01_02
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

20110510

Steve Jobs Speech Script_02

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

20110509

Steve Jobs Speech Script_03

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

20101128

The Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market (Tōkyō-to Chūō Oroshiuri Shijō), commonly known as the Tsukiji Market (Tsukiji shijō), is the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and also one of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind. The market is located in Tsukiji in central Tokyo, and is a major attraction for foreign visitors.

The market is located near the Tsukijishijō Station on the Toei Ōedo Line and Tsukiji Station on the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line. There are two distinct sections of the market as a whole. The "inner market" (jonai shijo) is the licensed wholesale market, where the auctions and most of the processing of the fish take place, and where licensed wholesale dealers (approximately 900 of them) operate small stalls.

The "outer market" (jogai shijo) is a mixture of wholesale and retail shops that sell Japanese kitchen tools, restaurant supplies, groceries, and seafood, and many restaurants, especially sushi restaurants. Most of the shops in the outer market close by the early afternoon, and in the inner market even earlier.

The market handles more than 400 different types of seafood from cheap seaweed to the most expensive caviar, and from tiny sardines to 300kg tuna and controversial whale species.Overall, more than 700,000 metric tons of seafood are handled every year at the three seafood markets in Tokyo, with a total value in excess of 600 billion yen (approximately 5.5 billion US dollars).

Tsukiji alone handles over 2000 metric tons of seafood per day. The number of registered employees as of 25 January 2010 varies from 60,000 to 65,000, including wholesalers, accountants, auctioneers, company officials, and distributors.

The first market in Tokyo was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu during the Edo period to provide food for Edo castle (nowadays Tokyo). Tokugawa Ieyasu invited fishermen from Tsukuda, Osaka to Edo to provide fish for the castle. Fish not bought by the castle was sold near the Nihonbashi bridge, at a market called uogashi (literally, "fish quay") which was one of many specialized wholesale markets that lined the canals of Edo (as Tokyo was known until the 1870s).

20110424

Ueno Zoo's giant pandas get new names

The two newly arrived giant pandas at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo have been named, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced Wednesday. "Ri Ri" and "Shin Shin" were chosen from 40,438 suggestions sent in by the public. 

The pandas, which arrived at the zoo Feb. 21, will go on public display at 1 p.m. March 22, the metropolitan government added. 

The male, Ri Ri, was called Bili in China, while the female, Xiannu, was renamed Shin Shin. The two kanji characters for Ri Ri stand for power. Shin Shin means truth or genuine. 

Of the more than 40,000 names sent in, Tan Tan and Mei Mei were the most popular. 

Ling Ling's death left the Ueno Zoo without a resident giant panda for the first time in 36 years; since October 1972 when two pandas, Kang Kang and Lan Lan, were given to the zoo to mark the normalization of bilateral relations between Japan and China. 

The Ueno Zoo reportedly fears a drop in its number of visitors due to the loss of Ling Ling.Approximately 3.5 million people visit the Ueno Zoo each year, including about 40,000 people per day on holidays and weekends.However, many visitors came specifically to see Ling Ling and other panda related attractions. 

Without Ling Ling, or another giant panda to replace him, the zoo fears that it may be unable to maintain current visitor numbers without the pandas. The Ueno Zoo is reportedly consulting the Japanese Foreign Ministry about obtaining a new panda from China. 

Ling Ling was the only giant panda in Japan which was directly owned by the government or a Japanese institution.There are still eight other pandas located throughout Japan.However, each of these remaining eight pandas are currently on loan from China and are not Japanese owned. 

Six of the Chinese pandas are currently housed at Adventure World, which is located in Shirahamacho, Wakayama Prefecture, while two other pandas resident at the Kobe Municipal Oji Zoo in Kobe, Japan. 

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda asked Chinese President Hu Jintao for two more pandas following Ling Ling's death. 

Ling Ling's death in April 2008 marked the second high profile death of an "elderly" captive panda in less than one month. On April 2, 2008, Taotao, the oldest giant panda in captivity in China, also died at the Jinan Zoo at the age of 36.