It is narrow, and it is three hundred and ninety metres long. Nishiki Market is a single thin street lined end to end with shops: Kyoto vegetables, pickles, yuba, and a great deal of fresh fish. The market is described as having four hundred years of history, and the reason fish dominated it is hydrological. The groundwater under this part of the city is cold and plentiful, which made it one of the few places in a landlocked capital where fish could be kept before ice was available.

It is still a market that professional cooks buy from. In the morning the voices along it are trade voices, orders and quantities; after midday the proportion of visitors rises and the register changes. This is the middle of the Shijō-Karasuma district, where there is little housing and rents are high, so most of the people working here travel in. Wholesale and retail run along the same street at the same time, which means prices exist in two versions depending on who is asking.

Narrowness is not a disadvantage in a market. When a customer can reach the shops on both sides at once, they stop inspecting one stall at a time and start comparing as they walk, and comparison is faster than inspection — so a tight street is quicker to shop than a broad one. If three hundred and ninety metres takes an hour to get through, the width of the lane is not what is slowing you down. There are simply too many things being offered against each other at the same moment, and each of them is asking to be weighed against the two directly opposite it.