Tatehana Wharf Morning Market

Every Sunday from March to December, more than three hundred stalls set up on a quay in Hachinohe fishing port and run from before dawn until nine in the morning. It is the largest morning market in Japan and it is not a tourist installation — it is where the city buys fish, vegetables, plants, tools, secondhand clothes and breakfast, and it has been happening for decades.

Getting there in the dark is the correct approach. Stalls are lit by bare bulbs, steam comes off the grills, and you eat standing up: grilled scallops in the shell, senbei-jiru, fresh doughnuts, coffee from a converted van. By eight o'clock it is packed and by nine everyone has gone home. Hachinohe has three morning markets and this is the big one; Mutsu-Minato station's daily market is the older and smaller counterpart ten minutes away.