When you know you'll be listening to presentations all day about Japanese schools, economics, and government, what do you do at 4:30 in the morning?  Well, you get up at 3:45 A.M., gather 3 other people for the taxi, and go to Tsukiji - the fish market.  All the action is during the early morning.  In the darkness before dawn and a little drizzle, the frenzied work went on.  It's not a place for tourists; it's a place to sell fish in wholesale quantities.  The work is to unpack, sort the fish by grade (quality), display the fish, and then auction them.  It's a busy place and tourists have to watch out not to get hit by the fast moving carts carrying the boxes of fish.  They are not reckless drivers, but the mission of the day is to buy and sell fish - not to be a tourist attraction.  
      When the auction is ready to begin, the auctioneer rings a brass bell like an old-fashioned school bell.  Only men work at the fish market.  The bidders place a bid by making hand motions with their fingers for numbers.  We were not able to understand their number movements, but all the bidders were polite and absolutely quiet.  The auctioneer, on the other hand, was wildly waving his hands and shouting.  The major auction is for maguro (tuna).  Some weigh as much as 650 pounds.  There are auctions in the market for other types of fish and seafood too - we saw octopus, clams, lobsters, scallops, crabs, and eel and squid, of course.  There were many kinds of fish I did not know the English for, so it wasn't much help when the worker told me in Japanese.  
Our taxi ride to the fish market cost about 1940 yen.  That's about $20.  100 yen is about $1.00.   So, your math problem for the day is to figure out how I am figuring out the price of things (hint, place a decimal somewhere and round off.)  Since the cab held 4 of us, the cost of the trip was reasonable since we shared the cost. 
      On the way back, 3 of us decided to try the subway.  At 6:00 A.M. it's not busy yet.  Although we had two subway maps, we had forgotten to know which subway stop was closest to the hotel; nor did we have the hotel address.  We narrowed it down to three stations (sort of like you do when you're not sure of an answer on the standardized test (Stanford 9) you'll take in March) and picked one.  Well, it wasn't the correct one, so as we began our walk to the hotel, we came across a lovely Shinto shrine.  The Shinto religion holds its beliefs from the basic belief that nature is divine.  At this early hour of the morning, only the shrine workers were there and 1 or 2 worshippers came.  It was immaculately clean and orderly (as everything in Tokyo has been that we've seen).  When you enter a shrine there is a lovely stone sink type of structure you walk to.  The water starts flowing like a fountain.  You wash your hands and sip from a tin ladle first, then you drop some money into a bin that is about 8 feet long, 3 1/2 feet high, and 4 feet wide as an offering.  You then ring a huge bell that is hanging inside the roof at the top by pulling a large rope about 5 inches in diameter.  The bell is about the size of three basketballs and looks like a giant sleigh bell.  This announces your presence to the gods.  You walk to the altar and lap twice and bow to get the god's attention, and then pray.  You bow again when your prayer ends.  At the shrine you can get a fortune.  If it's a bad one you leave it behind, to get rid of it, by tying it on a rack with string across the posts.
       From the bustle of the fish market to the peacefulness of the shrineÖall by 8:00 A.M.