Funnily enough, I live in Toyosu, and can see where the market should have been moved to from my house.<p>The cause is simple enough: graft and corruption on all levels and at a massive scale, exposed in large part by Yuriko Koike (the relatively new governor of Tokyo).
Some similarities to the Berlin Brandenburg Airport saga. They were only a few weeks away from a planned move of all the airlines into the new airport in 2012, when it turned out there were massive flaws in the design and construction, and allegations of corruption.<p>Now it's 2017 and the airport still isn't ready... Maybe 2019?<p><a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/01/economist-explains-18" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/01/e...</a>
>It’s also fairly obvious that the fishmongers weren’t widely consulted during the construction process. The shiny new stalls for vendors are closed off in an attempt to be more sanitary, but the design deeply limits the mobility of the fishmongers, especially when cutting large hunks of fish. (In one television program about the new space, a wholesaler showed just how difficult it is to go about his business of slicing tuna as his elbows repeatedly bumped up against the cubicle-tight walls.)<p>s/fishmongers/programmers/g<p>"It’s also fairly obvious that the programmers weren’t widely consulted during the office remodeling process. The shiny new office for the programmers is an open space in an attempt to be a more collaborative environment, but the design deeply limits the ability to focus of the programmers, especially when working on the complex pieces of code. (In one twitter periscope stream about the new space, a programmer live tweeted just how difficult it is to go about his business of coding as his focus was repeatedly broken and/or his attention was repeatedly called for by the multitude of other people's happenings in the wide open space of the office around him.)
It's really frustrating how hard it is to properly manage/use a resource like the ocean.<p>We're not running out of chicken, but we are running out of fish.
For a country that functions so well, it's amazing it can still have such occurrences of dysfunction and corruption. Sounds like this mayor would be a good prime minister.
>"Tsukiji is the most exalted fish market on earth, the sort of humbling place that causes the likes of globally worshipped god-chef René Redzepi to deem it one of the “seven culinary wonders of the world.”<p>What a cringe-worthy sentence that is. Also what a load of crap that sentence is. I'm guessing the writer has never actually been. Tsukiji is a wholesale fish market. Its smelly, cold and wet with lots of flash frozen fish sitting on warehouse pallets. Just like what you would expect a wholesale fish market to be. It just happens to be in Tokyo.
One of the few fish markets selling whale meat. But the tourist community keeps tolerating it.<p>update: And for some reason I get downvoted for denouncing something that is against our best interest... whales regulate the oceanic carbon cycle. You kill them and contribute to ocean acidification.