$37,500 Bluefin Tuna Sells to High Bidder in Tokyo's First Catch of 2015

A 400-pound Bluefin tuna sold for $37,500 at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market over the weekend in the first auction of the season.

Kiyoshi Kimura, the owner of a prominent sushi restaurant chain, said that many consider the first fish of the year to be lucky, and that he actually expected to pay more for it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Kimura has dominated the widely watched event for the last few years after a protracted bidding war with a restaurant chain owner in Hong Kong.

In January 2013, he paid a yet-to-be-beaten record of $1.76 million for a 222-kilogram tuna. That coup came just a year after Kimura paid $736,700 for the first catch of 2012.

Tsukiji is the world's largest wholesale fish market in the world, and remains a popular tourist attraction. It is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, its last full year before a planned move to Tokyo's Toyosu area in November 2016.

CNBC reported that the high-profile fish auction comes on the heels of a December auction in New York, where a giant white truffle sold for $61,250 to a food connoisseur from Taiwan.

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