Thanksgiving Day in Japan

Today started very early! I left to visit the fish market at 5:15am. There were things to see everywhere I turned.
The most exciting part of the fish market is the tuna auction. The lower the number placed on the tuna, the more valuable the meat. These were the biggest fish I have ever seen!
Can you guess what this is?
What do you think these are?
After the fish market, I went to visit a very beautiful temple.
The statues in this picture represent babies that died. It was very sad.

The majority of my day was spent inside listening to speakers. Our first speaker represented a book publisher and gave us all three children's books. Next, we had our prefecture orientation. After that, a professor from the International University of Japan spoke about Japan's economy. For lunch I tried octopus and noodles. I wonder if the octopus came from the fish market... After lunch, we had several members from the Diet discuss Japanese government. Then, we heard the president of the National Institution for Academic Degrees present on Japanese Education.
We had our official welcome reception this evening. The Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology was one of the speakers that welcomed us. All four of us from Washington had our picture taken with her.
In honor of Thanksgiving we were served turkey (and many other things) for dinner.