Tsukiji Outer Market & Toyosu Market (2026): Tuna Auction, Opening Days and Where to Eat (2026)

What moved, what stayed. Toyosu Market opened on 11 October 2018 and took over the wholesale side of Tsukiji: the auctions, the intermediate wholesalers who buy from them, and the restaurants that fed the market's workers. It's three big blocks beside Shijo-mae station on the Yurikamome line: Block 7, the Fisheries Wholesale Market Building, where the tuna auction happens, with a restaurant area on the 3rd floor of its management building; Block 6, the Fisheries Intermediate Wholesale Market Building, with a 3rd-floor restaurant area and market goods shops on the 4th; and Block 5, fruit and vegetables, with restaurants and shops on the 1st floor. A marked visitor route on raised walkways links them. The wholesalers' own stalls sell only to trade buyers, so you can look but not shop there; the restaurants and goods shops on the route are open to everyone.

Watching the tuna auction: two ways, both free. The easy one is the second-floor visitor walkway in the Fisheries Wholesale Market Building, where you look down on the tuna auction floor through windows. It opens at 5am on every market day, you don't book, and the market says there's no limit on numbers. The closer one is the tuna auction viewing deck, by lottery only: 100 people a day, from 5:45am to 6:25am, gathering at 5:30am at the PR Corner on the 3rd floor of the Block 7 Management Facilities Building, five minutes' walk from Shijo-mae station. If you don't win, or you're late, you can still use the walkway.

How the lottery works. Apply on the official site, toyosu.jcdlotterysite.jp, during that month's window: one application per group, up to five people, every person named (a baby counts as one), with up to three preferred dates. There's no fee, no second round, no same-day entry and no date changes; if you can't go, you don't need to cancel. Winners get an email, and on the day every person shows it with photo ID (a passport is fine). Photos are allowed, without flash. Tickets can't be transferred or resold, and drunk visitors are turned away.

The dates for this winter. For December 2026, the deck runs on 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22 and 24 December, and not from 25 to 30 December. Applications are open from 4 November (3pm) to 10 November 2026 (11:59pm), with results by email on 19 November. For January 2027, the window is 2 December (3pm) to 8 December (11:59pm), with results on 17 December; the January viewing dates aren't announced yet. The market doesn't take applications for 25 December to 5 January.

Opening days. The market is closed on Sundays, national holidays and its own closed days, which in winter fall on most Wednesdays. On those days the visitor walkways, the PR Corner and the market's restaurants and shops are all shut; only the rooftop garden stays open. Fish market closed days from the market's official calendar, November 2026 to January 2027 (on top of every Sunday):

• November 2026: Tue 3 (holiday), Wed 11, Wed 18, Mon 23 (holiday). Wednesday 4 and 25 November are open.
• December 2026: Wed 2, Wed 9, Wed 16, Wed 23, Thu 31. Sunday 27 and Wednesday 30 December are open for the year-end rush.
• January 2027: Fri 1, Sat 2, Mon 4, Mon 11 (holiday), Wed 13, Wed 20, Wed 27. Wednesday 6 January is open.

Hours on a market day. Visitor walkways, including the restaurant and shop areas, 5am to 5pm; the PR Corner (exhibits on how the market works) 8:30am to 2:30pm, or to 11:30am on Saturdays; the rooftop garden 5am to 11pm, with a view over the bay towards Tokyo Tower. Restaurants keep their own hours, and some close well before 5pm. You can't eat or drink in the walkways or on the benches.

Getting there. Take the Yurikamome to Shijo-mae, then follow the pedestrian deck straight in. Toei buses stop at Shijo-mae Ekimae. There's no parking or bike parking for visitors. From Tsukiji, Toei bus 市01 runs from Shimbashi past the outer market (Kokuritsu-Gan-Kenkyu Center stop) to Toyosu-Shijo, so you can do both markets in one morning.

Breakfast at Toyosu: Sushi Dai and Daiwa Sushi. These are my two picks inside the market. Sushi Dai is on the 3rd floor of the Block 6 Fisheries Intermediate Wholesale Market Building; Daiwa Sushi is in a separate building, so check the sign before you join a line. Neither publishes its hours or prices on an official site, so I'd go straight from the auction walkway, early.

Both are inside the market, and the market's restaurant areas can't be entered when the market is closed: every Sunday, national holidays and the closed Wednesdays above. The market's restaurant floors have plenty of other sushi, seafood-bowl and tonkatsu counters if the queues are too long.

Daiwa Sushi is the other half of that pair. Neither has an official booking page, so you just turn up.

Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai is the food and hot-spring complex beside the market, built to carry on Tsukiji's bustle. It's connected to Shijo-mae station by the 2nd-floor deck, four minutes' walk. Inside: a market-style street of stalls selling food picked by the market's wholesalers to eat at a counter; a food court with sushi and seafood bowls and a kids' area; an Edo-style street of restaurants serving sushi and eel; and, on the 8th floor, a foot bath garden with views over Toyosu, free for anyone. The Tokyo Toyosu Manyo Club spa, with hot-spring water brought from Hakone and Yugawara, is the only part that charges.

Hours: shops 10am to 6pm; restaurants 10am to 10pm, with some closing at 8pm and some 2nd-floor stalls opening at 9am; the foot bath garden 9am to 10pm. It's open every day, including the market's closed days, so it's where to eat at Toyosu on a Sunday or a closed Wednesday. Coin lockers are on the 2nd floor by the pedestrian deck, and there's free Wi-Fi.

The Tsukiji Outer Market is where most visitors actually want to be: a few blocks of narrow lanes packed with fishmongers, tamagoyaki makers, pickle and dried-fish shops, knife and tableware sellers, and small restaurants, most of them still selling to the trade as well as to you. The market's history goes back to 1935, when the fish market moved here after the 1923 earthquake; when the wholesale market left for Toyosu, these shops stayed. It's a minute's walk from Tsukijishijo (Oedo Line) or Tsukiji (Hibiya Line), and three minutes from Higashi-ginza.

When to go. The association's own advice: from 6am to 9am professional buyers have priority and visitors should keep out of their way, and 9am to 2pm is normal selling time, which it recommends for visitors. Many shops close on the wholesale market's closed days, but about a third, mostly restaurants, open on Sundays and holidays. Over New Year most shops close until 4 January. December is the Japanese New Year shopping rush, when the lanes are very crowded and the association warns of pickpockets; it suggests shoppers come at 7am to 8am then, before the midday crush.

The eight rules. The outer market publishes its own etiquette, and it's worth knowing: give way to buyers before 9am; eat inside the shop or in front of it, not while walking; put big bags and suitcases in a coin locker (prams can be left at Plat Tsukiji for ¥500); move in small groups and hold children's hands; ask before you photograph a shop, as some forbid it; don't touch the food; don't haggle; and smoke only in the designated area. Plat Tsukiji, the information centre (8am to 2pm weekdays and Saturdays, 10am to 2pm on Sundays, holidays and closed days), has English-speaking staff, maps, lockers, a Seven Bank ATM, a currency exchange machine and the tax refund counter.

Shopping. Most shops can ship your purchases within Japan, and room-temperature goods can be delivered to Haneda or Narita airport or to a hotel in central Tokyo. Some shops take cards and some are cash only, so ask first.

For the outer market's street food at length (grilled scallops, wagyu skewers, Ihachi's hot-stone wagyu), see our best street food in Tokyo. For a sit-down seafood bowl at 6am, Marukita is in our best breakfast in Tokyo, and Standing Sushi Bar, for cheap nigiri by the piece, is in our Ginza guide.

Tsukiji Marutake makes thick, sweet tamagoyaki, the rolled omelette that ends a sushi meal, and sells a ¥200 stick of it at the shop front. It opens at 4am on weekdays (8am on Sundays, with alternate Sundays off in January and August) and closes at 2pm, and it shuts on holidays and market closed days. It has two more outlets at Toyosu: a branch for trade buyers on the 4th floor of the Block 6 building (weekdays 4am to 11am) and a PREMIUM shop on the 2nd floor of Senkyaku Banrai (10am to 6pm).

Kitsuneya is the market workers' breakfast that isn't fish: beef bowls, horumon-ni (offal simmered in a miso broth) and niku-dofu (beef and tofu), served from a counter, from 6:30am to 1:30pm. It's closed on Sundays, holidays and market closed days, and there's no booking.

Tonboya makes one thing: a tuna steak, seasoned with sake and soy so it eats almost like beef, according to the owner on the market's own shop page. It opens at 8am and closes when it sells out, and it's closed on Thursdays.

Sushidokoro Unitora is the easy sit-down sushi: an eleven-seat counter on Tsukiji's Naka-dori, with fish bought at Toyosu each morning, nigiri sets and seafood bowls at lunch, and sushi with drinks in the evening. It's open 7am to 10pm (last order 9pm) with no closing day, which makes it a useful answer on a Sunday or a closed Wednesday, and it takes cards and QR payment as well as cash.

Sushizanmai's main store opened in Tsukiji in April 2001 as Japan's first 24-hour sushi restaurant, and it's still open 24 hours, every day. It's the flagship of a big chain, with 144 seats over three floors, tablet ordering, children's seats and takeaway all day, and no reservations. It isn't the most refined sushi in Tsukiji, but it's the one that's always open, which counts when jet lag wakes you at 4am.

Namiyoke Inari Shrine sits at the back corner of the outer market. Its name means "protection from waves": according to the shrine, when the land here was being reclaimed after the Great Fire of 1657, the sea kept washing the work away until a statue of the Inari deity was found floating in the water and enshrined here in 1659, and the waves stopped. It's the market's guardian shrine, worth five minutes between snacks, and it lists its seasonal events, including the Tori-no-Ichi fair in November and New Year prayers, on its own site.