Takashi Shibayama’s typical day starts at 1 a.m. He wakes up, hurriedly throws on some clothes and sits down to eat the simple breakfast his wife prepares for him — a bowl of rice, miso soup and pickled Kishu ume.
His older brother, Shinichi, picks him up at 2 a.m. and, together, they travel to Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market to work in Shibasen, a family-owned intermediate wholesaler that was founded by Shibayama’s grandfather and has been in operation for about 90 years.
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