¥686 of Octopus: A Saturday at Tsuchiura Fish Market
There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from owning a piece of equipment you have no business owning. Mine was an electric takoyaki pan — eighteen round wells in a cast plate, with a small octopus face embossed on the handle — bought for a student apartment in Tsukuba by someone who had never made takoyaki.
This is the story of the Saturday I finally used it.
Early Morning — The Market Opens Early
土浦魚市場 (Tsuchiura Fish Market) does not keep student hours. I was standing inside it before 7am on Saturday, 19 November 2022, which meant leaving Tsukuba in the dark.
The building tells you what it is before you walk in. A long yellow sign runs across the front: 食事・魚市場・海鮮丼 — meals, fish market, seafood rice bowls. Above it, a banner reads 海の恵みを食卓へ — the ocean’s blessing, to your table. And in the corner, the detail that explains why I picked a Saturday: 毎週土曜日 まぐろ食べ放題 1500円. All-you-can-eat tuna, every Saturday, ¥1,500.
Outside, a red forklift was still moving pallets of styrofoam. Men in work jackets were stacking boxes in the half-light. This is a wholesale market that tolerates retail customers, not a tourist attraction — and at that hour, the distinction is obvious.
Inside, the squid were laid out in a styrofoam tray, whole, packed head-to-tail, still glossy. A torn piece of paper sat on top with a handwritten price: イカ 1ヶ 350 — squid, one piece, ¥350.
I did not buy the squid.
Minutes Later — 266 Grams from Senegal
What I bought instead was sitting under plastic wrap on a white tray: 真だこ (madako), common octopus, cut into thick curls of tentacle with the suckers still perfectly ringed.
The label is worth reading in full, because it contains the joke of the whole day:
- 刺身用 — for sashimi. Safe to eat raw.
- 266 g at ¥258 per 100 g
- ¥636 before tax → ¥686 all in
- Best before 22.11.20 — the next day
- Processed by a company in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki, about fifteen minutes from where I was standing
- セネガル産 — product of Senegal
I had woken up before sunrise to buy local seafood at a local fish market, and the octopus had flown in from West Africa. Somewhere between Dakar and this styrofoam tray, it had travelled considerably further than I had.
I have thought about that label many times since. It is the most honest thing anyone in Japan ever told me about where food comes from. The market was local. The market’s supply chain was not, and it did not pretend otherwise — it printed the origin on the sticker in the same size type as the price.
¥686. That is the entire raw material cost of this article. For context, a single serving of takoyaki from a stall runs ¥500–700, and gets you six or eight.
Early Afternoon — The Part Nobody Photographs
Hours later, the octopus was on the cutting board.
Because it was sold sashimi-grade, it had already been boiled — that deep purple-brown skin over dense white flesh, firm enough to hold its shape against the knife. This is the step that intimidates people, and it should not. The tentacles cut easily into coins. The head portion needed more attention.
Soon it was all in a white bowl: a pile of pale octopus pieces flecked with purple where the skin held. Two hundred and sixty-six grams looks like more when it is diced.
I photographed the empty pan, still cold, sitting on the table on top of a stack of paperwork. Eighteen wells. I remember thinking that eighteen was going to be either exactly right or a serious miscalculation.
Mid-Afternoon — Eighteen Wells, Two Rounds
The first eight came out pale. Golden in patches, blond everywhere else, sitting on a floral plate in two shy rows. Anyone who has made takoyaki knows this stage: they are cooked, they are round, and they look nothing like the photographs.
Not long after, there were fourteen on the plate, arranged in a rough flower — one in the centre, the rest circling it. Browner. Better. The technique had improved measurably over the course of a single batch, which is the most encouraging thing that can happen to anyone cooking something for the first time.
Then came the part that makes it takoyaki rather than fried batter:
- takoyaki sauce, brushed on and pooling brown in the gaps
- Japanese mayonnaise, in thin white stripes
- 青のり (aonori) — green seaweed powder, scattered
- 鰹節 (katsuobushi) — bonito flakes
The bonito flakes are the whole point. They are shaved so thin that the heat rising off the takoyaki makes them lift and curl and move, and in the photograph I took, they are caught mid-motion, standing up off the plate like something alive. Every takoyaki stall in Japan sells that moment. It turns out you can produce it at home, in Ibaraki, with octopus from Senegal, for well under ¥1,000.
Evening — And Then We Had Soba
Here is the ending I like most, because it is the true one.
That evening I photographed dinner: two vacuum packs of そば from Kasumi, the local supermarket chain. Own-brand. 添加物不使用 — no additives. Pre-boiled, refrigerated, packed three days earlier on 16 November.
After a pre-dawn cycle, a market run, an afternoon of dicing and batter and eighteen wells filled twice — dinner was two packs of supermarket soba.
What ¥686 Actually Bought
I have written a fair amount on this site about the financial mechanics of being a student in Japan — the stipend, the deductions, the exemptions, what is actually left at the end of a month. This Saturday is the other half of that ledger, and it is the half I find easier to recommend.
¥686 of octopus — plus whatever the eggs and two packs of soba added on top, which I never priced — produced a full afternoon, a meal for two, and one photograph of curling bonito flakes that I still think is the best food photograph I have ever taken.
A year later I would eat takoyaki in Osaka, at the source, on the way to Wakayama. It was better than mine. Obviously it was better than mine.
But I did not wake up at five in the morning for it, and I did not find out that it came from Senegal.