‘Japan’s tea parties take etiquette to another level’

A six-day trip to Osaka, Tokyo and Kyoto brings home to Sophia Money-Coutts just how much we Brits share with this Far Eastern nation

Ihave a cunning plan. If we’re really going ahead with this acrimonious divorce from Europe, why not team up with Japan instead? Seriously, Tokyo may be nearly 6,000 miles (9,650km) from Britain and seem an exotic land of alarming food and mysterious lettering, but we have a surprising number of things in common. They drive on the left, they’re obsessed with tea. They love a good garden and they like an orderly queue even more. They have great respect for their royal family.

Committing a chopstick faux pas in Japan is a bit like using your knife to eat your peas in England. On day one of my trip, I left mine standing upright in a bowl of rice. The horrified guide explained that means “death” – Japanese offer bowls of rice with chopsticks standing to attention to departed souls at Buddhist temples. I apologised. But I’m grateful for the chopstick incident because it sparked my Brexit idea:

Japan is a country where manners matter even more than they do to us in Blighty. We could be great bedfellows.

I visited three cities: Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, in six nights. Take more time if you can, but such is the efficiency of the train and subway system that you can criss-cross the country like a heat-seeking missile. The average delay on the main railway line between Tokyo and Osaka is 10 seconds; I’m excited about the cooperation between their engineers and ours already.

Highlights in Tokyo include shooting 1,500ft up a Twiglet-thin building called the Skytree, the city’s tallest tower. This gives you an idea of Tokyo’s size. The world’s biggest metropolis – population: 37 million – is a beguiling combination of old (seventh-century temples) and new (flagship Hello Kitty store), but from up here it’s mostly a skyscraper skyline.

All tourist literature will advise that you visit the legendary Tsukiji fish market, famous for its 4.30am tuna auctions. A single bluefin was sold once for a record £1.3 million – but it’s recently moved as part of Tokyo’s development ahead of the 2020 Olympics. In its new, more hi-tech home called Toyosu, keen visitors can still get up early to watch the auctions and sample fishy delicacies from the surrounding stalls. Stalls flogging crab brains, clams the size of digestive biscuits, tentacled octopus legs or hunks of blood-red tuna flesh are open from early morning if you feel like forgoing a croissant in your hotel. The Japanese traditionally eat rice and drink miso soup for breakfast, though my guide told me forlornly that toast and jam is increasingly popular and so her countrymen, famously slim, healthy and long-lived, are “getting fat”. I apologised to her for this

Western invasion.

It was in 2007 that Michelin published its first Asian edition, and awarded more stars to Tokyo than Paris. The French were horrified. But the rest of the world took note. Go on a food tour while in Tokyo because the scene can be daunting and a guided tour makes it less so. I took the three-hour Allstar tour, which covered three buzzy districts of Tokyo: Yurakucho, Ginza and Shinbashi. We learned about izakayas, the small bars or restaurants often near railway stations where salarymen gather after work for beers. At lunch I ate a 213-day-old cow called Mia; Japanese restaurants serving properly marbled, Wagyu beef have to display the certificate of the specific cow alongside the steak. (Squirm if you like, but at least you know where it came from.).

The level of detail increased the next day in Osaka, Japan’s second-biggest city, where I arrived after shooting 250 miles (400km) south-west on the bullet train. From the train, I presented myself at a tea house in jeans and trainers. To my surprise, I spent the next five hours in kimono and white tabi socks – the ones with the separate pouch for your big toe – trying to master the intricacies of the Japanese tea ceremony. Picture an extremely formal British tea party that lasts for up to four hours, during which time you eat cucumber sandwiches on your knees and bow every few seconds. The to your chin. And yet there are elements of kitsch newness to be found even in Kyoto. The next day, I paid 1,000 yen (about £7) to spend half an hour in Wan Nyan Chu cat café.

These took off in the early 2000s, supposedly to give stressed workers the chance to unwind with an animal, since most apartments in Japan prohibit pets. In this café, young women dressed as geisha fed the dozen or so cats dried-fish flakes as the animals lolled about. No shrieking about animal rights, please, they were treated like kings. There are also puppy, owl, rabbit, goat, penguin, lizard and hedgehog cafés. So you see they are animal lovers, just like us. Honestly, we’re going to get on so well.

Cox & Kings (coxandkings.co.uk) offers a six-night tour of Japan from £3,995 per person (two sharing) and includes flights from London with Emirates (into Tokyo/out from Osaka), six nights’ four/five-star B&B, all transfers, train journeys, all excursions (including food tour around Tokyo, tea culture experience with a geisha in Kyoto and walking tours in each city) and an Englishspeaking tour guide throughout the trip. Price based on travel in early March 2019. Further information: kyototourism.org; gotokyo.org