Tokyo’s  record-breaking New Year’s Day fish market auction tuna arrives at one of Japan’s favorite casual sushi restaurant chains.

Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market takes the first few days of the year off, but their opening day, which fell on January 5 this year, is a big deal. The opening day auction sees the highest bids for tuna of the entire year, and the fish that fetches the highest price on that day is dubbed the ichiban maguro, or “number-one tuna.”

Until now, the highest price paid for an ichiban maguro was 336.2 million yen (US$2.18 million), back in 2019. At this year’s auction, though, that record was obliterated, as the 2026 ichiban maguro, a 243-kilogram (535.7-pound) fish caught in the Oma area of Aomori Prefecture, sold for 510.3 million yen (US$3.33 million.

And then we ate it.

OK, so we didn’t eat the whole thing ourselves, since we don’t have the stomach capacity or the bank account that would allow us to consume such a massive, and massively expensive, tuna. However, this year’s ichiban maguro wasn’t purchased by some members-only sushi restaurant in Ginza that serves an exclusive list of politicians and captains of industry, nor did it end up in the hands of a luxury hotel’s top-floor restaurant that caters to big-spending international tourists. Nope, that 510.3 million yen was dropped by Sushi Zanmai, a chain of casual, relatively inexpensive sushi restaurants. While they’re not as cheap as conveyor belt sushi joints, Sushi Zanmai has a reputation for impressive quality for the prices they charge, and after winning the auction they announced that not only would they be shipping slices of this year’s ichiban maguro to individual branches, they also wouldn’t be marking up the price for it to anything higher than what they usually charge for tuna.

▼ Sushi Zanmai restaurants usually have a smiling statue of the company’s president near the entrance, quickly communicating that it’s not a stuffy, formal dining establishment.

Knowing that some of the ichiban maguro was on its way to Sushi Zanmai’s Shinjuku Higashiguchi branch in downtown Tokyo, just a short walk from SoraNews24 HQ, our Japanese-language reporter Ahiruneko headed over in hopes of getting a taste of Japan’s most expensive tuna ever on January 6, one day after the auction. Posted right at the entrance was a banner celebrating Sushi Zanmai’s winning ichiban maguro bid, its first since 2020.

When Ahiruneko asked a server, they confirmed that yes, they did indeed have sushi made with the ichiban maguro. In order to give as many customers as possible a chance to taste it, they were limiting orders of the record-breaking fish to just one piece per person, but the price was still 398 yen, Sushi Zanmai’s standard price for tuna.

Looking around at the rest of the lunch crowd, which was a mix of locals and international travelers, Ahiruneko saw that the majority of them had ordered a piece, and he, of course, asked for one too, waiting in excited anticipation for it to arrive at his table, and when it did…

…it did not disappoint visually. This was a stunningly beautiful slice of fish, with a captivating crimson color that was the perfect example of why lean tuna is called akami in Japanese, which literally means “red body.”

Though this was only a bite-sized portion of it, Ahiruneko felt as though a palpable ichiban maguro aura was emanating from his piece of sushi.

Obviously a single piece of sushi wasn’t going to fill Ahiruneko up, so he also ordered a mixed sushi set for 1,078 yen. As luck would have it, this set also included a piece of akami tuna sushi, though not made from the ichiban maguro.

This gave Ahiruneko the opportunity to compare the two by tasting the regular and ichiban maguro sushi pieces back to back.

Starting with the normal tuna sushi, it had a soft texture with a bit of a sticky quality to it. To Ahiruneko, it almost tasted more like toro, extra-fatty tuna, than it did akami. That’s not a complaint, though, as it was quite tasty, and beyond anything he feels you’re likely to find at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in terms of overall quality.

The ichiban maguro sushi, though, was something very special. To start, the texture felt tighter, with a satisfying bit of firmness as his teeth bit into it. There was none of the heavy, lingering flavor that comes with toro, and instead the taste was clean and pure, worthy of its status as sushi quasi-royalty. The freshness of the ichiban maguro was exquisite, so immediately evident that even a sushi newbie would notice and appreciate it in an instant.

If he were going to nitpick, Ahiruneko might say that the ichiban maguro was so fresh that its flavor profile almost felt stark in a way, whereas the regular tuna that came in his mixed sushi set had a little more complexity to it. Which of those two is more enjoyable is a matter of personal preference, but regardless of which you’d put on top, anyone who likes tuna sushi would love Sushi Zanmai’s ichiban maguro, and the egalitarian way in which the chain has given so many sushi fans a chance to enjoy it has us hoping they end up with the winning bid in next year’s opening day auction too.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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