"For Japanese, fish is the very best thing in the world," Sadao Ohashi declares with pride as he pushes his medieval-looking, two-wheeled wooden cart at jogging speed, maneuvering a load of mackerel, squid and sea bream through the moving maze of carts, people and battered one-man trucks that throng the slippery concrete vastness of Tsukiji Fish Market down by the Sumida River in Tokyo's Chuo Ward.
For deliveryman Ohashi, leaving for work around midnight from his nearby home is a bit like going into battle, weaving between fleets of trucks laden with produce fresh from seaports near and far. From then, till the time at which office workers start filing into the high-rises over the road, he's hard at work with his karuko, trundling the sea's bounty from the wholesale auctioneers' sheds to the stalls of some of the market's 1,200 middlemen fish merchants or delivery vans waiting to whisk his loads to supermarkets, restaurants and family-run fish shops all over Kanto.
Making a living at Tsukiji, the world's largest seafood market, is nothing if not hard work. But it's a challenge Ohashi, a grizzled 62-year-old with half a century's work there under his belt, is proud to rise to night after night, come rain, sun or snow. "I love fish, and I've been in and out of this market since I was a kid, so now it's part of me," he declares. "This place is always jumping and it's really tough work, but I'd never think of doing anything else. This is the life for me."