What Toyosu Market is
Toyosu is Tokyo's central wholesale market for seafood and for fruit and vegetables, built on reclaimed land in Koto ward. It opened in October 2018, when the wholesale market and its auctions moved here from Tsukiji, and it covers roughly twice the area of the old site. The shops and restaurants of Tsukiji's Outer Market stayed where they were, so the two are now separate visits.
This is a working market first. Buyers and wholesalers trade on the ground floor, and visitors keep to walkways and observation windows on the upper floors. The wholesale stalls sell to the trade, so you cannot buy fish at the auction, but you can eat very well inside.
What to see: three blocks joined by a deck
The market is split into three blocks joined by a raised pedestrian deck from Shijo-mae Station, and you enter each one from the deck. The seafood wholesale building holds the tuna auction floor, which you look down on through the glass of a visitor gallery on the second floor.
The intermediate wholesale building across the road is where fish is sold on to chefs and shops. Its upper floors hold most of the market's roughly 40 restaurants and Uogashi Yokocho, around 70 specialist shops selling knives, dashi ingredients such as kombu and katsuobushi, tamagoyaki, pickles and cooking tools. The fruit and vegetable building has its own gallery and a few more restaurants, including the long-running sushi counter Daiwa Sushi.
Sushi Dai, the best known of the market's sushi counters, is in the intermediate wholesale building, along with seafood bowl shops, tempura, tonkatsu, a curry counter and coffee shops that open in the small hours.
- Eating and drinking in the walkways, benches included, is not allowed. Eat inside the restaurants.
- Most restaurants open before dawn and close by early afternoon. Uogashi Yokocho winds down around noon.
- Queues at the famous sushi counters can run to hours. A seafood bowl at a smaller shop is a good plan B.
The year at Toyosu
The market's year starts with the first auction after the New Year break, in the first week of January, when the top bluefin tuna sells for a headline price and makes the evening news. You cannot apply for the auction observation deck over the year-end and New Year period, but the second-floor gallery is open whenever the market is.
Winter is when bluefin is at its fattest. In recent years the market has held an autumn market festival with food stalls, and Senkyaku Banrai next door runs seasonal events and night markets in its plaza through the year.
Big events on the bay can change the schedule. On the evening of a fireworks show in Tokyo Bay, for example, the visitor route and the restaurant floors have closed early, so check the market's notices if you plan to go on a festival day.
The tuna auction, closed days and timing
There are two ways to watch the tuna auction. The second-floor gallery is open to anyone without booking from 5am on market days, and you look down through glass at rows of tuna and the bidding below. The lottery deck's viewing slot runs from roughly 5:45 to 6:25am, which is a good guide for when to be at the gallery too.
For a closer view, the lower observation deck is allocated by a free online lottery. You apply month by month, usually in the first half of the month before, for a group of up to five with up to three preferred dates, and about 100 people a day are chosen. Babies count as group members, and the person applying must be of junior high school age or older. If you win, everyone shows photo ID on the day (a passport for visitors) and you meet at 5:30am at the PR corner on the third floor of the administration building. Photos are fine, flash is not, and there is no waiting list.
The market is closed on Sundays, national holidays, most Wednesdays and a few days at New Year. On closed days you cannot enter at all, restaurants included, so check the market calendar on the official site before you go. Senkyaku Banrai stays open on market holidays.
- Missed the lottery? The second-floor gallery has no visitor limit and needs no ticket.
- If you won a deck slot, check the night before that your route gets you there by 5:30am.
- There is no visitor parking. Come by Yurikamome or bus.
Getting there and nearby
The market has its own station, Shijo-mae on the Yurikamome, the driverless line that runs from Shimbashi over Rainbow Bridge and through Odaiba to Toyosu. The station connects straight to the pedestrian deck, and the market is about five minutes on foot. From the Yurakucho Line, change at Toyosu Station to the Yurikamome, two stops away.
Senkyaku Banrai, opened in 2024 right next to the market, is the easy add-on: an Edo-style street of shops and restaurants, a food court with sushi and seafood bowls, and Tokyo Toyosu Manyo Club, a 24-hour hot spring bath that brings its water in by truck from Hakone and Yugawara. The footbath garden on the eighth floor is free and looks out over the bay, and the complex is open daily, including when the market is closed.
teamLab Planets is one stop away at Shin-Toyosu, Odaiba's malls and seafront are a few stops further along the Yurikamome, and Tsukiji Outer Market, the old market's shopping streets, makes a natural pair on the same morning.
