Predawn tuna auctions are all the rage in Japan. Maybe it's the men in rubber boots and baseball hats making hand signals and slinging fish all over the place, or perhaps it's the fact that nearly $20 million worth of fish change hands daily at these markets, but it's a huge tourist attraction regardless. Approximately 90 percent of visitors who show up to the markets for the early a.m. dealings are not Japanese. "In Holland, we have a flower market, a cheese market, but nothing like the Tsukiji market," said a Dutch tourist. "It's one of the top 10 attractions in Tokyo. You must visit here." Such popularity has its downfalls, though -- a drunken British hooligan was caught on film licking the head of one of the tunas for sale.

Since each fish can go for over $11,000, such behavior is not looked upon kindly. Fed up with similar inappropriate (though usually less tongue-related) tourist-fish interaction, the market banned all visitors during peak season in January. The ban was recently lifted, despite grumblings from the market staff, and they are trying to handle the fish-groping problem by handing out leaflets at the entrance to the market which clearly warns in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, English, and Russian to not touch the fish, to not take flash photos (which interferes with the hand signals), and to leave the markets promptly after the auctions are over at 5 a.m.