Toyosu Market

Toyosu opened on 11 October 2018 as the replacement for the Tsukiji inner market, and on opening it became the largest wholesale fish market in the world. It holds two seafood markets, one for general wholesale and one for auctions, plus a fruit and vegetable market, each in its own building, linked by pedestrian decks above the traffic. The buildings are closed and refrigerated, which is the entire point: the old market's open sheds could not hold a cold chain, and the new one can.

For a visitor that means a route rather than a wander. You walk glazed corridors above the trading floors, look down at the fish, and eat in a restaurant zone that sits along the same route. The intermediate wholesalers' floor sells to trade buyers only, in quantities aimed at supermarkets, fishmongers and restaurants, so a member of the public cannot buy from it at all.

That is stated flatly on the market's own visitor page, and it is the single largest difference from the shopping street at Tsukiji.

The upper visitor passage is open to anyone from 05:00 on a trading day, free, unbooked. You look down through glass at the tuna laid out in rows and at the buyers working along them. The balloted deck is on the same level as the floor, holds 100 people a day in rotating groups, and runs from 05:45 to 06:25.

Everything below describes the balloted one, because the free one needs only an alarm clock.

Two rules are worth reading twice. Viewing places cannot be transferred, resold or bundled into a commercial tour, and the market says so explicitly; anybody offering to sell you a place on the lower deck is selling something they do not have. And a winner who cannot come does not get another date: the market will not move a place to a different day.

Losing the ballot is not a disaster, though. The market's own document points losers straight back to the second-floor visitor passage, which shows the same floor from twenty feet higher.

Getting there at that hour

Yurikamome trains do not run early enough for a 05:30 meeting time, which is why the guided cards on this page tell you to arrive by taxi. There is no visitor parking and no bicycle parking at the market, so driving yourself is not the answer either. If the ballot goes your way, budget for a taxi across the city or a night on the bay side; if you are taking the guided morning, the operator handles the transfer between the two markets and expects you at the meeting point under your own steam.

Toyosu does not close on a fixed weekday. Its closed days are set annually, per commodity category, seafood, produce, meat and flowers each on their own schedule, by the Tokyo governor after consultation with the market's own trading council. They are published as per-category annual calendars rather than as a sentence anybody can quote, which is precisely why a page that tells you the market is closed on Wednesdays and Sundays is guessing.

• On a closed day the PR Corner and the visitor passage are shut, and the restaurant and retail area shuts with them
• Sundays and public holidays are closed days too, so the weekend visit most travellers plan is usually the one that fails
• The rooftop green plaza stays open at its normal 05:00 to 23:00, which makes it the only part of the site worth a wasted journey
• Wednesdays are closed more often than not, but often is not always, and the calendar is the only authority

The practical method is unglamorous: open the market's own annual calendar for the month you are visiting, find your date, and only then book anything around it. Do the same before you commit to a guided card, because a 05:00 tour on a closed day is a tour of a locked building. This is one of the few Tokyo venues where the closure rule is genuinely unpredictable rather than merely inconvenient, and it is a different problem from the Monday museum shutdown that closes so much of the rest of the city.

The restaurants and shops are inside the visitor area, which runs 05:00 to 17:00, but the market's own page warns that individual businesses set their own opening and closing times and that some finish trading while the visitor area is still open. In practice the sushi counters open with the market and start closing through the late morning, which inverts the timing every visitor expects: the queue for the famous counters is at its worst around 07:00 and the choice is at its worst by 11:00.

• Eating and drinking in the passages and on the benches is banned, so food is eaten where it is sold
• Nothing at all can be bought from the intermediate wholesalers' floor, which sells only in trade quantities
• Cash is worth carrying; individual prices are not published centrally and are not quoted here for that reason
• On a closed day the restaurants close too, which is the second half of the closed-day trap

Senkyaku Banrai next door

The complex on the far side of the pedestrian deck is the market's public-facing sibling: an Edo-styled shopping street, a food court with a children's area, a plaza with a bell, and the Tokyo Toyosu Manyo Club bathhouse, which trucks hot-spring water in from Hakone and Yugawara. Its eighth-floor foot-bath garden is opened free to the general public and looks out over the bay; a second, higher foot bath belongs to the bathhouse's paying guests. Bathhouse admission is charged and the amount is not published on the pages we could read, so budget for it as an unknown rather than a figure.

The complex renamed its market half on 1 September 2025, which is why older articles describe it under a name it no longer uses.

The short answer for a single morning: go to Toyosu if you want to see the trade, go to the other for the eating and shopping, and take a guided morning if you want both without solving the transfer yourself.

Both guided cards on this page take the two in one morning in that order, which is the right order: the auction cannot wait and the stalls can. The full outer market guide covers the second half properly, and where to eat in Tokyo puts both in the context of the rest of the city.

The variable is not how long the market takes but how early you are willing to start, and whether you are eating here or somewhere else afterwards.

Whichever you take, the market is a morning and not a day. Pair it with something on the same side of the bay rather than crossing the city half asleep: teamLab Planets is one Yurikamome stop away and opens at 08:00, which fits the end of a market morning almost exactly.

• The close-up auction deck is a lottery, explicitly not first come first served, and the market states this in bold on its own page (shijou.metro.tokyo.lg.jp, early-morning tuna auction viewing, read in Q3 2026)
• The draw takes 100 people a day, in groups of up to five including infants, and one email address may enter once (market's own application document, September 2026 cycle)
• On a closed day the restaurants and shops close with the market, and only the rooftop green plaza stays open, 05:00 to 23:00 (shijou.metro.tokyo.lg.jp, opening hours and visitor routes)
• Closed days are fixed annually per commodity category by the governor after consulting the trading council, which is why no weekly rule exists to quote (market FAQ, shijou.metro.tokyo.lg.jp)
• The public cannot buy from the intermediate wholesalers' floor at all, because it sells only in trade quantities to shops and restaurants (shijou.metro.tokyo.lg.jp, visitor notes)

A market start means a 04:30 alarm and, if you are on the ballot, a taxi. That is a reasonable trade once in a trip, and unreasonable on the day after a late arrival or a long flight. Put it early in the stay while your body clock is still on the wrong side of the world, which is the one occasion jet lag does a traveller a favour.

Afterwards, stay on this side of the bay. teamLab Planets at 08:00 and Odaiba after that make a coherent day out of an early start, and both are a short ride on the line you are already standing on. Crossing to the temple and museum half of the city at 08:00 on four hours' sleep is the version of this plan that ends in a nap. The rest of the city's early options are on the things to do list.