Martha and Nobu’s Excellent Adventure

What’s the proper attire when you’re sloshing through fish guts? If you’re Martha Stewart, the answer is a pair of classic khakis, beige Martha by Mail garden clogs with pink trim and an understated, matching pink Jil Sander raincoat.

“It’s a bit of an expensive coat to be walking around here in, but it’s perfect,” she said. “It’s rubber.”

The food and lifestyle maven hit the fish trail here one recent dawn to film a Webcast from the famed Tsukiji wholesale market, which handles 3 million pounds of fish a day. Her guide through the scaly maze was celebrity restaurateur Nobuyuki Matsuhisa.

Nobu, as his retinue calls him, is the man behind several trendy celebrity-filled restaurants in California, New York and London, including Beverly Hills’ Matsuhisa and New York City’s Nobu.

The two are filming a program on Japanese cuisine for food, wine and travel Web site Exorbis (https://www.exorbis.com) from a narrow alley at the perimeter of the fish market, a down-and-dirty neighborhood where hip boots are the footwear of choice amid a wash of blood, scales and dirty water.

In the wings, a gaggle of assistants, publicists, gawkers, cameramen and brand-conscious business partners mills about as bloodstained fishmongers struggle to navigate their carts and bicycles through the melee.

“They’re in our way, all this TV stuff,” said Tamakuma Jungi, a store owner of 20 years, marveling at the spectacle. “What’s the point? These celebrities come--that tennis player, Steffi Graf, was just here. But they don’t even buy any fish.”

The background chosen for the Nobu and Martha show is a picturesque display of brightly colored Japanese pickles, guaranteed to please eyes even in the most upscale of Connecticut mansions.

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Just a few feet to the left and barely out of camera range, however, is a shop dedicated to all manner of beasts rare, endangered or otherwise exotic--a side of Japan arguably less familiar to many of Stewart’s genteel, well-heeled viewers. For those who love their wildlife stuffed, various body parts from once-perky sea turtles, bears, wolves and zebra share shelf space with a $3,600 stuffed lynx-like creature and $4.80 packets of dried squid. The piece de resistance, a 7-foot-tall, $15,700 stuffed adult polar bear, is balanced on a flaking Styrofoam base once apparently shaped to look like snow.

In “Good Morning America”-style, Stewart and Matsuhisa chat about various Japanese delicacies, remark on how fresh everything looks and marvel at the $75,000 price tag for a single, top-end tuna. Her knowledge of Japanese food is impressive, and several of her books have sold well here.

Then the pair settles in for an on-camera sushi treat. A minnow-size crisis ensues when it becomes apparent that no one has remembered the chopsticks, but Stewart deftly navigates platter to palate by hand in accepted Japanese style.

In and around the program’s fish tales, the two food celebrities devote several minutes to exotic fruits and vegetables. In an impressive show of agility, production staffers juggle in and out of camera range a quick stream of melons, mountain potatoes and various garnishes with no English translation anyone can come up with, capped off by a red and yellow rambutan.

“It’s not really prickly,” Stewart says of the tropical fruit, as she shares the experience with those in Web land. “It’s soft and hairy.”

As the stand-up draws to a close, two tourists from western Ohio unfold a copy of their hometown newspaper, the Bellefontaine Examiner, for a shot with Stewart. This is their first trip to Asia, the result of a contest they won through the portal Yahoo!, which links to Exorbis.

“As long as we hold up the paper, they’ll publish the photo back home,” explains Sandy Stephens, a teacher from the town of 18,000. “It’s hokey, we know, but how many other people in Bellefontaine will have that happen in their lifetime?”

In an interview between the fish stalls, Stewart says that as technology makes the world smaller, Americans have become far more sophisticated about foreign cultures.

“People really want to know more,” she says.

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They head for the heart of the market, a busy blur of fish-laden forklifts where some of the world’s most expensive tuna is sold each morning to the highest bidder.

“Now we have to go get pictures with the fish,” says Stewart, as someone rings a bell simulating a big sale. “It’s an auction, like the stock market.”

The next stop is a famous sushi knife shop, founded in the 1860s, where an evil-looking tool with a club at one end and a steel hook on the other attracts the group’s attention.

“This is great,” Stewart jokes. “You could carry this in New York at night when you’re on a dark street.”

Matsuhisa, in jeans and a casual black fleece sweater, has reportedly threatened to serve fugu at that evening’s dinner, which he’s hosting at his restaurant here. Some in the group seem rather tentative about the prospect of eating this poison-laden Japanese delicacy, which can kill the diner if it’s not prepared correctly.

“Just make sure Matsuhisa doesn’t drink sake before he cuts the blowfish,” says Exorbis founder Neal Skoka. “It’s like driving drunk.”

The group navigates the tiny alleyways, taking it all in. On one side are hundreds of octopuses and fish of all imaginable varieties. On the other are rows of anemones, sea urchins, eels and sea snakes, a fraction of the $25 million in goods sold each day. A pile of freshly chopped fish bits catches Stewart’s attention.

“I’m so glad they don’t have a central nervous system,” she jokes.

Matsuhisa explains that the ultimate sign of freshness for the Japanese is a fish whose nerves are still moving involuntarily as it arrives on your plate. Stewart counters that U.S. regulations probably preclude such delicacies.

World-shrinking technology like the Internet threatens to homogenize global cultures, Stewart says, a worrying trend for those who enjoy visiting food markets like Tsukiji. That said, it still hasn’t created a single global standard for table manners.

“People slurp their noodles in Japan. They eat with their fingers in Iran,” she says. “Still, politeness, a smile and being nice are universal.”