On the next day we were heading for Omi-Cho market; a quite well known market in Kanazawa and in Japan in general. Not as impressive as some of the real big ones in Tokyo or as fancy and strange as Kyoto or Osaka, but still exciting and thrilling…

Fern roots

Yes, you slice them, cook them, grill them, … Lots of fibre…

Interesting way to drink orange juice

In most booths you can directly enjoy what you bought

Oysters

Yummy…

Well, I had to give the example, then Ursi tried as well

Not too easy and quite big, but lovely taste and consistency

Filling soy sauce

Seaweed

And fish-skin on a stick (yummy, too…)

Little grilled fish

They are pre-prepared and when you buy them they put the fish on the coal once more.

So you can enjoy a real fresh taste

Sea urchin – absolutely lovely…

So small and innocent – yet so delicious

Yes, it does taste great! And no, it’s raw…

Abalone treatment… First cooked, then sprayed with sugar-soy sauce, then flamed, then quartered…

Small ferns

Quite some tuna…

The flowers must be cool for decoration as well

And here is the Chinese counterpart of the winking cat from yesterday evening… We did like the Japanese variety better

Typical customer – proprietor scene…

investigating the vegetables… We are so keen on something real green… Not marinated, not cooked, just juicy and easy to nibble…

Well, this is nice, too – but no vegetable I have to admit

This lady took her bento box (lunch box sold and eaten everywhere) to a free table and enjoyed it considerably

The markets below are ebbing off as customers leave for lunch (in general they are open from 09:00 – 20:00 with a more or less big break around lunchtime)

Yes, this is more like it… Unfortunately most vegetables just look nice but the taste went missing during the production Tomatoes were good indeed, cucumbers nice, radish – well, there is some taste

Typical butcher’s display

Usually the fatter the better in Japan. But the fat has to be “in” the meat as a kind of marble structure. 8 € / 100g is quite steep for fresh meat…

And yes, the ordinary flower shop is there, too

After seeing so much food, we got hungry too and headed upstairs where some quite nice restaurants where.

From the upper level the markets looked quite different

In the end we opted for some noddle bar as we planned to eat at night again.

As we were seated at the counter we could glimpse around…

To our fellow eaters

Our soba (= buckwheat) noodles are prepared

slightly tossed into water

Then taken out in the net (the same applies to udon (= Japanese wheat noodles) or ramen (= Chinese wheat noodles))

and cooled in the sink. After the cooling (so they don’t stick) they are applied to the target container…

In our case for Ursi Soba Tororo (Tororo is the Japanese name for Nagaima No, I know this doesn’t help a lot… Nagaima is a nutrient rich tuber pretty much like a potato http://www.am.zennoh.or.jp/nagaimo-aomori/whatisnagaimo.html)

Or soba with pork and leek (for me…)