DETAILS TRAVELlevels. And with the 2020 Games – along with the new direct flight that
launched last year from London to Osaka – it finally looks set to spike.
It’s easy to focus on Tokyo’s tourist highlights – the sushi, the skyline- but the best reason to go is simply the Japanese people. Tokyo is the
largest metropolitan area in the world and yet the locals are also easily
the most polite. Stand at a level crossing and, even if there are no cars
all the way to the horizon, the Japanese will still refuse to cross until told. I
heard a car horn on my fourth day in Tokyo and it genuinely shocked me.
I realised it was the first one I’d heard all trip. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
Even for the things that require local knowledge – to book at Jiro,
the three Michelin-star restaurant considered to serve the best sushi
in the world, you must be a Japanese speaker or no dice – every high-end
hotel is now full of English-speaking staff who’ll do it for you. I stayed
at the glorious Mandarin Oriental Tokyo and the concierge there came
this close (though it did save me from blowing hundreds for a meal that
is apparently over in half an hour; Jiro tells you when to eat each bite).
It also can’t be emphasised enough how clean Japan is. No one drops
rubbish and the only litter-pickers I saw carried handbag-size refuse
totes for the occasional receipt that had been taken by the wind. Every
inch feels steam cleaned – even the subway and subway carriages. It’s
probably because of this that Tokyo is so subterranean. Tube stations
aren’t merely stations, they are vast, gleaming, labyrinthine malls. It is a
metropolis where you can get away from the city by going underneath it.
Then there are the national quirks. The way every public informa-
tion sound seems ripped from a Nintendo game (the crossing lights
tweet at you). The obsession with perfectly formed fruit (it’s sold for
fortunes in high-end department stores). The brilliant tiny bars that
consist of only that: a bar, eight seats and a bartender that simply closes
the door when they’re full (you make friends quickly). The obsession
with Manga and the deeply weird Manga pornography featuring ten-
tacles that... you don’t want to know.
And travelling around Japan could not be easier. The bullet train
network now spreads across the entire island. What’s more, the trains are
so reliable it’s common for Japanese businessmen to waltz up to the plat-
form with seconds to spare, safe in the knowledge the train will be there
to meet their stride. A few months before my visit, a train left a Tokyo
platform 25 seconds early. The rail operator was forced to issue a public
apology. They called it “truly inexcusable”. They launched an internal
investigation. Heads rolled. It was the most Japanese thing imaginable.Artist’s rendering of Kengo Kuma’s New National
Stadium, the centrepiece for Tokyo 2020MANDARIN ORIENTAL, 2 CHOME-1-1 NIHONBASHIMUROMACHI, CHUO CITY, TOKYO.
and Kengo Kuma and Associates 0081 3 3270 8800. FROM £460 PER ROOM PER NIGHT. MANDARINORIENTAL.COM/TOKYO
09-19DetailsTravelJapan.indd 57 05/07/2019 12:17SEPTEMBER 2019 GQ.CO.UK 53