Tokyo's usually frantic Tsukiji fish market, the world's largest, would normally hum with tourists but two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami visitors are few and traders look worried.
Famous for its noisy pre-dawn tuna auctions and air of organised chaos, the market this week saw sellers standing idle as demand for seafood and other food products slid amid global worries about Japanese produce after a nuclear scare.
Traders blame a combination of massive supply disruptions from the wrecked northeast, and lower demand from a nervous Tokyo's half-empty hotels and restaurants.
Kenichiro Saito, who has been selling green "wakame" seaweed from hard-hit Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, said the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11 had already changed his business forever.
"We know we won't be able to eat wakame from these areas for two or three years," Saito said. "So for now, we're getting supplies from Hokkaido -- at higher prices, of course, due to supply and demand."
Food safety fears have risen since radiation from the coastal Fukushima plant has been detected in vegetables and dairy products grown nearby, and after iodine levels in Tokyo tap water rose above levels safe for infants.
There has been no official warning about the impact on marine life, but operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. Said Thursday that iodine-131 levels in the ocean near the plant were 145 times the legal level, Kyodo News reported.
Japan's government has shared data on higher radiation in food and water with the public, stressing that their consumption would not cause an immediate health risk -- but worries have grown among consumers.
"I'm not really that reassured," said 48-year-old shopper Kaori Toyama.
"I systematically check where the products I buy are coming from, and I am avoiding anything from Fukushima or Ibaraki," two of the four prefectures at the centre of the scare, she said.
"As for the government's remarks, sometimes I am rather confused. Now the government says the level of radioactivity in the water in Tokyo has gone down. I'm doubtful. In any case, I won't let the children drink any of it."
While the market has seen a broader drop, prices for some kinds of seafood have risen 20 to 30 percent since the disaster, due to a lack of supply from the hardest-hit areas, where several thousand ships were wrecked.
