Over in the vegetable section, boxes of fresh tomatoes, daikon, cabbages and citrus fruit are stacked high, awaiting delivery. At the shops surrounding the main market, meanwhile, there's a real abundance of food on sale. The contrast with the 'trapped and starving in post-tsunami Tokyo' stories doing the rounds in tabloid newspapers overseas is pretty striking: if this is scarcity, we'd be interested to know what excess looks like.