Tokyo's "Toxkiji Fish Market" Still Set To Open In 2016

Above, the Tsukiji Fish Market. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Tokyo is pressing ahead with their planned move of the Tsukiji Fish Market, one of the top tourist attractions in the city. The current facility was first opened in 1935.

The plan is to move the fish market by 2016. But the move has been complicated due to the toxins in the soil at the planned new location. Those toxins have to be completely removed before the new fish market facility can be built.

According to eTurboNews:

Now, almost 80 years later, the city plans to move the market to a new location and give the popular tourist draw what advocates say is a badly-need technological update. 

But not everyone is happy about the move away from prime-real estate in the centre of the teeming metropolis. 

Relocating the market and building to a modern facility about 40 percent larger with state-of-the-art refrigeration will cost upwards of $3.8-billion. 

And the move, now scheduled for 2016, has been marred by revelations of heavy soil contamination at the site, once formerly a gas plant about 2.3-kilometres away. That has saddled Tokyo with more than half a billion dollars in cleanup costs at the less-than-central location.

It looks like tourists have about two more years left to see the historic Tsukiji Fish Market before it is closed down and the occupants move to the new location. Will the new facility be called the "Toxkiji Fish Market"?

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