Tokyo

For More than half a Millennium, ever since Marco Polo returned from the kingdoms of the East with tales of a wondrous land called Cipango, the mystique of Japan has held a uniquely seductive allure for Occidental man. Over the years, he has cast many a yearning glance toward this storied archipelago, his Western psyche tranquilized with visions of pagodaed hills, of picturesque paper houses, of blossoming cherry trees, of lotus-soft women with musical voices and complaisant ways. Today this siren song has lost none of its allure, but the tempo has begun to quicken: mingling with the languid largo of the samisen are the insistent rhythms of a rock-'n'-roll guitar. The cadence is that of change, of growth, of uncontainable energy. It is the upbeat pulse of Tokyo, the biggest, busiest, brassiest city in the modern world -- an amalgam of prosperously coexisting anachronisms which threatens to pre-empt (text continued on page 111)Paris as the mecca for males in pursuit of pleasure.

Situated in central Honshu, largest of the four Japanese islands which form a craggy, California-sized crescent off the east coast of Asia, this 800-year-old onetime feudal fiefdom sprawls across 828 square miles of low marshland, populated by 9,700,000 souls. Resurrected from the ashes of (text continued on page 113) war to unchallenged pre-eminence as Japan's -- and probably Asia's -- financial, industrial and cultural capital, it is a metropolis of stupefying confusion and schizophrenic diversity, half clinging to ancestral Eastern icons, half erupting in unabashed emulation of the West. This head-on collision assails the senses in a flood of contradictory, somehow compatible images: huge red balloons touting beer and cigarettes float above meticulously manicured ancient parks; kimono-clad mothers stroll the avenues with their duck-tailed, blue-jeaned sons; steel-girdered fire towers stand sentinel over centuries-old Shinto shrines; bronze Buddhas seated under ginkgo trees stare sightlessly at humming laundromats; geta-shod beauties clip-clop homeward to dig Dillon-san, Doc and Chester on the terebi.

The Tokyo of today is both a brash, swaggering, night-swinging boom town and a serene city of subtle refinement and quiet introspection. Almost miraculously, beneath its machine-tooled veneer of flux and enterprise, it has managed to preserve an inner core of calm, steeped in antiquity. It is a city both worldly and unworldly, chaotic and contemplative -- athrob with cabarets of elemental enticement, yet dotted with temples of unearthly beauty; raucous with burlesque of unflinching ribaldry, yet enriched with theater of classic purity; forested with TV aerials, yet carpeted with sylvan gardens; thronged with courtesans trained in the ways of the flesh, yet graced with geisha versed in haiku, court music and traditional dance.

Savoring the fruits of this earthy Eden can become a memorable reality for any man with a week or two of leisure, a modicum of loot, and the necessary soupçon of wanderlust. Preparatory paper work is minimal: you'll need a visa stamped in your passport (processable in 24 hours at your local Japanese consulate, or in a few days by mail if your town lacks same); and the standard vaccination certificate. Pack the togs you'd take on a trip to Washington, D.C.; Tokyo's climate is approximately the same, though perhaps a bit damper.

Thanks to the jet age, the Far East has become relatively near: flight times to Japan have dwindled to twenty hours from New York, seventeen from Chicago, and a mere fourteen from the West Coast. Via any one of the major lines serving Tokyo -- Pan Am, BOAC, Northwest Orient and Japan Air Lines -- the round-trip tariff from New York is $1659 first class, $1060 tourist; proportionately less from intermediate jump-offs. In girdling the Pacific you may elect the southern route, with the option of an overnight stay in Honolulu; or the northern, via Anchorage, which, though no scenic paradise, is an hour or so faster. You may, of course, prefer to make your way by water.

Before you can say "Jack Lobinson," your jet clipper will be arching earthward over the blue-green geometric patterns of seaweed traps in Tokyo Bay; weather permitting, you may even catch a glimpse of the immaculate cone of Fuji, floating above the cumulus 75 miles to the west, serene and somehow unreal in the late afternoon sun. Soon after touchdown at Haneda Airport, where customs clearance is handled with characteristic Japanese courtesy and dispatch, you are ready for the 40-minute limousine spin into town.

As your car threads through mile after mile of sprawling gray suburbia toward the city's incandescent core, you will find yourself plunging into a vortex of Dantean confusion. Putt-putting three-wheel trucks and whining motor bikes zigzag amongst the locust whir of cyclists; chauffeured Cadillacs surge like sleek dreadnoughts through the melee, bearing in air-conditioned solitude the plump tycoons of Japan's postwar industrial boom; tiny beetle-shaped taxis (aptly called kamikaze by the populace) dodge and dart about.

Add to the din the plaintive whistle of bicycling bean-cake vendors, the babble and shuffle of scurrying pedestrians, the blare of TV from sidewalk café, the twanging samisens and thumping hand drums of a chindonya band ballyhooing the opening of a new store, the clickety-click ding-ding of careening trolleys, the singsong sales pitches from store-front loud-speakers, the whir of carousels and Ferris wheels high atop department stores -- and everywhere the jackhammer clamor of big construction, as functionally modern department stores, office buildings and hotels mushroom at an astounding rate to accommodate the 300,000 a year who swell the population of a city which will soon become the world's first 10,000,000 metropolis.

Your nose will be assailed by the usual gas fumes and factory smoke; but mingled with these universal city smells is a suffusing redolence that is typically Asian and yet peculiarly Tokyo's: an insinuating scent at once subtle and overpowering, compounded of bamboo and sandalwood, of seaweed and steamed noodles, of wet straw and damp earth, of simmering soy sauce and frying peanut oil, of dried fish, burning charcoal, tanneries and dye works.

As you speed hotelward, you will more than likely be mystified by the labyrinthine intertwining of streets and alleys. For most foreigners, learning the lay of this vast and amorphous city is comparable in complexity to the task of deciphering the subplots of a kabuki drama -- to no small degree because those few of Tokyo's serpentine thoroughfares which have individual names tend to change them every few blocks in the most whimsical manner. During the occupation, General MacArthur strove valiantly to create some semblance of geographical order by introducing a system of lettered avenues and numbered streets; but the plan met with scant success. City officials have politely retained the weather-beaten signs posted by the occupation forces, and they do offer at least a clue to the maze; but they mean nothing at all to the Japanese, who still prefer to give directions which always seem to begin, "Turn left at the beautiful cryptomeria tree by the stream where the noodle man sits on sunny days ..." Unless you are of a poetic turn of mind, we suggest you entrust yourself to the savvy of a cab driver; many speak English after a fashion, and you can always ask the hotel doorman to scribble directions on a slip of paper for the cabby to read.

As the limousine negotiates the circuitous remaining blocks before arrival at your hotel, you might make a lastminute review of an imminently eminent matter: yen. The exchange rate is 360 to the dollar, minus a small service charge for conversion in banks and hotels. Whatever the charge, you'll find that your lucre lasts longer in Japan than in either the U.S. or Europe, thanks in no small part to one of the more delightful Japanese monetary customs: tipping is all but unknown. Though hotels, restaurants and night spots exact a flat ten percent tariff for services rendered, neither cabbies nor bellboys nor waitresses nor maître des expect palm lubrication of any kind. If you feel impelled to pass silver for some favor beyond the call of duty, 100 to 200 yen will be considered prodigal. (For the benefit of readers disinclined to perform mental gymnastics with a monetary conversion table, all yen prices henceforth will be quoted in dollar equivalents.)

You should, of course, make your hotel reservations well in advance. Even though Tokyo hostelries boast some 5000 Western-style rooms (and more are being added at a manic clip to accommodate the expected influx for the 1964 Olympic Games), the race for space among travelers is still critical. The most prestigious rendezvous for American tourists is Frank Lloyd Wright's venerable Imperial Hotel, a monolithic Mayan-Colonial bailiwick adjacent to fir-fringed Hibiya Park. Though 39 years of daily earthquakes (most of them hardly perceptible) have been unable to undermine either its architecture or its unimpeachable dignity, this austere relic is slowly sinking into the silty marshland on which it stands -- though not quickly enough to prevent you from enjoying a delightful stay. On firmer ground next door, Imperial impresarios have constructed the New Imperial, a lavish Hiltonesque citadel of Western comfort, replete with pastel bathrooms and pseudo-Scandinavian decor. Rates at either branch are regal by Japanese standards, though not by American: single rooms with Continental breakfast go for about $6, doubles for about $9. Room service is instantaneous, and the food is first-chair.

In the same neighborhood are a trio of hotels rightly favored by Western (continued on page 164) Tokyo (continued from page 114) visitors of less rococo dispositions. In the vast Dai-Ichi -- self-described with quaint immodesty as "enjoyable to the depth of charm in an atmosphere of elegancy and joyfulness" -- an impersonally modern but quite comfortable room may be had for $4. The lush Nikkatsu, at a teeming intersection athwart the Imperial Palace Plaza, offers splendid singles for $7, deep-carpeted suites worth every penny of $30, one of the finest hotel dining rooms in Tokyo, and a shopping arcade vending wares ranging from 100-year-old Chinese jade to week-old American newspapers. The smaller Nikko, featuring compact singles for $5 and a rooftop barbecue with a panoramic view of the city, has the added virtue of being located at the hub of the entertainment district. Less convenient to downtown diversions -- but serenely remote from their tumult -- stretch the landscaped acres of the Takanawa Prince, a resort of Floridian opulence erected (complete with golf driving range and two heated swimming pools) on a former estate of the Imperial family; single rooms cost $5, doubles $8, and luxurious three-room suites, commanding a vista of Tokyo's Horseshoe Bay, are a bargain at $28. There are several other Westernstyle hotels which offer rooms and service comparable to the best of U.S. hostelries; among those worthy of your patronage, should the aforementioned be booked solid, are the New Japan, the Toshi Center, the Sanbancho, the Azabu Prince and the Akasaka Prince (no relation), the Shiba Park and the enormous Koku-sai Kanko. Rooms in all range between $5 and $20, depending on your predilections for creature comfort.

However, in order to savor the calm simplicity of genuine Japanese quarters we strongly recommend -- lacking an invitation to stay in the home of a Japanese friend -- that you flout tourist tradition by spending at least a night or two of your visit at a ryokan, or traditional inn. You may find yourself deciding to stay on longer, for their quiet beauty and gracious hospitality are justifiably legendary. The guest rooms of these gracefully unadorned wooden dwellings contain neither beds nor chairs, dressers nor side tables. Floored with softly fragrant straw mats called tatami, upon which you sit, sleep and dine -- sans shoes, of course -- they are furnished with little more than a bedroll, a low lacquer table, a hanging scroll, and perhaps a vase of chrysanthemums; somehow this is more than enough. You sit sipping tea in a cool cotton kimono as your petite chambermaid slides open a paper-paneled shoji to reveal a verdant vision: slopes of wild flowers, rolling turf, lily ponds, ancient stones and artfully manicured bonsai trees, all arranged to create a harmonious unity with the inn itself. Altogether, it's an enchanting introduction to the stately serenity of Oriental living -- with but one distraction which many actually find refreshing: blissfully oblivious of Western views on privacy, the maid is apt to enter giggling, day or night, without any warning whatever.

Tokyo abounds with such sylvan sanctuaries, but among the most beautiful, in our opinion, is the Honjin, an authentic feudal castle with silken service and impeccable elegant decor. The Kegon, which houses one of the city's most epicurean sukiyaki restaurants, is a tempting alternative, as is the more subdued charm of the Kizan and the Sudaiso. Rates are reasonable in all, ranging from $5 to $8 "American" plan for a single room with two Japanese meals. The only shortcoming is the matter of language. Employees at Westernized hotels can cope comprehensively with English, but ryokan staffers, accustomed to native clientele, are for the most part spectacularly undecipherable -- a situation paralleled in varying degrees, incidentally, throughout Tokyo. Though English is the secondary language in Japanese schools, it nevertheless remains an enigma in practice to the vast majority -- though few will admit it. In any event, with a few basic guidebook phrases dutifully memorized en route, and a pocket glossary within arm's reach, your difficulties will be negligible.

For the nonce, ensconced in your shoji-walled room, begin your vocabulary with one essential word: ofuro or honorable bath. The Japanese are among the most scrupulously scrubbed and refreshingly unself-conscious peoples in the world. Every ryokan has a deep ofuro of wood or tile suitable for a least four sudsy souls; in the larger inns, a jolly fifteen or twenty can be accommodated in pool-sized tubs. For one and all -- foreigners included -- the management of most ryokan will transform this aquatic group therapy into a singular esthetic pleasure by furnishing a halter-and shorts-clad jochusan, or bell girl, who will cleanse your hide before plunging you into the lobster-hot tub for a suffusing soak; she will then administer an invigorating massage -- often via the startling but profoundly pleasurable technique of trotting up and down your back barefoot with delicate dexterity. Her attitude, it should be pointed out, is strictly professional; so you needn't bother working up a lather. The bill for all this tactile delight, incredibly, will come to around a dollar. Don't despair if you're registered at a Western-style hotel, however; though tubside scrubbing service is unavailable, a sure-footed masseuse can be summoned to your room by phone.

Duly pummeled and parboiled, you will be refreshed for a leisurely pre-dinner promenade. Before setting forth, however, you will have secured a fistful of the bilingual calling cards in which the Japanese set such store for establishing business and social contacts; they can be procured within the hour through the desk clerk. Thus equipped, and with a goodly supply of yen, you stroll out into streets still athrong with pedestrians and traffic -- but now also ablaze with neon. The city is humming through dusk into the electric excitement of night that is peculiarly Tokyo's. Down broad tree-lined boulevards; past the swan-dotted moat of the Imperial Palace, just visible over the crest of the sweeping, stone-buttressed wall which surrounds its 250 acres of exquisite grounds; and through shop-lined lanes astream with bicycle-driven rickshas, your ambulation finally finds you standing on the Ginza, Tokyo's pulsing main artery. A frenetic thoroughfare only one-half mile in length, it is Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, Place Pigalle, and the Via Veneto all rolled into one; though no one is really sure, it has been estimated that upwards of 50,000 bars, night spots and eateries line the Ginza -- along with the biggest and most fashionable department stores in the Orient, an assortment of public bathhouses and an uncounted number of pachinko parlors, where a jangling bastardization of pinball is played with rapt concentration by men, women and children alike. It is a scintillating stretch at any hour, but most especially now, as galaxies of billboards bloom with multicolored lights.

As you walk and look, you will find yourself garnering many stares from the diminutive throngs; for the Japanese have never become blasé about their stature. You'll note the multitudinous, almost toylike bobbing of heads as friends greet one another with deferential politesse. The dress of nearly all will be Western: the men in conventional suits; the women, who have been persuaded that the flat planes of the kimono are not flattering to the feminine curves so modish in the West, wear quiet floral-patterned dresses. (Once home, of course, nearly everyone, male and female, doffs Western garb for the familiar compact and classic beauty of the kimono.)

Many of the signs in front of stores and night spots, you'll notice, are bilingual, bearing a picturesquely mutilated brand of English; connoisseurs of local sign language fondly recall a barber's blurb reading "Heads cut here"; and the intriguing revelation that appeared before a tailor's shop "Ladies have fits here."

Having found your way to the heart of the matter, you might well elect to sip a preprandial libation at any one of the numberless bars and coffee shops that line the Ginza and its Lilliputian side streets -- byways so tiny and so panoplied with jutting wooden placards that even small cars are unable to enter. In picking a spot, it would be well to stay with those establishments sporting English signs at their portals; the ones that don't may not cotton to Caucasians. Among the more companionable spas are the Rat Mort, a chandeliered chateau serving expertly swizzled cocktails; and the Tennessee Tea Room, a pleasantly peculiar coffeehouse which along with the caffeine, purveys decent drinks, rockabilly musicians in flamboyant cowboy outfits imitating Elvis, Fabian, and other musical spokesmen of Western culture. At Gin-Paree, a miniature outpost of Continental charm just off the Ginza, a troupe of Japanese vocalists relentlessly -- but somehow engagingly -- render such chansons as the ever-popular Apuru in Parisu. Nearby is Shirobasha, a Stygiandark, four-storied java joint which also does a heavy trade in the more potent potables. A few blocks south is Eraishon, an ornate den in which elevator-borne vocalists waft eerily past the tiny balcony upon which you perch with your drink. If you prefer a setting of Gothic splendor, you might amble into Kohaku, Hami-Kochi, or Chopin-Scalaza, more Far East than far-out nuclei for culture-and coffee-lovers, in which you will be permitted to commune silently with Mozart and Bach on the stereo while you sit sipping with the other longhairs.

Drinks in any of the above will cost about a dollar apiece and can be nursed as long as desired without a glower. When ordering, we advise that you stick to imported stock, because native Japanese liquors (including gins) tend to be a mite sweetish. Japanese beer, on the other hand, is among the truest of brews--richer than light American lagers, yet lighter than the dark European products. And you'll also want to sample a porcelain bottleful of sake, the national beverage -- though it might be best to save this pleasure for savoring over dinner.

At about this juncture, as the relaxing intake of spirits bolsters your own, you may well begin to ponder the possibility of forming a liaison. In a city of over 4,750,000 women, the task of securing companionship for your evening's outing is both prohibitively difficult and absurdly simple. Technically speaking, the postwar constitution conferred on Japanese women equal status with men: in one bold stroke they were liberated from their traditional cipheric role and legislated into individual identity. In practice, however, the principle of personal liberty has not filtered through to either the older generation or the upper classes, where papa-san is still very much the master, exerting sufficient control over his daughter to blueprint both her personal life and her marriage. The consequence: if you are not a Japanese male of honorable family, prospects and intentions, your chances of dating an old-fashioned or blue-blooded lass are, quite simply, nil. It is barely possible that you will be able to gain escort rights with the daughter of a proper middle-class family, but usually only if you possess gilt-edged diplomatic or military connections. Among the remaining thinking belles, happily, both democracy and its attendant pursuit of happiness are fervently embraced. For the unhurried male with a well-honed approach, this chick-list presents a wide array of possibilities: you may beguile a pert waitress from the Tennessee Tea Room, a willowy salesgirl from Mitsukoshi department store, a short-stemmed chorine from the epidermal displays at the Nichigeki Theater, or a chic stewardess who works the Pigeon Bus tours -- delightful damsels all. But the most expeditious and facile opportunities are to be found among the massed ranks of hostesses employed by the city's various cabarets and night clubs. The evening is still too young, however, to undertake an expedition into this vast nocturnal domain; its enticements must await the completion of the dinner hour -- a golden time in the round of Tokyo's cosmopolitan night life.

Perhaps no other city in the world offers the gastronome such cornucopian fare. Its 30,000 restaurants cater to a potpourri of ethnic tastes, offering everything from a knish to a tamale. The two best-known native dishes are sukiyaki, an elegant meat and vegetable stew by now a household recipe from New York to San Francisco; and tempura, an equally favored and savored assortment of deep-fried seafood and sliced vegetables. In a sukiyaki restaurant you remove your shoes, sit on tatami matting at a low table, and watch hungrily as your waitress ceremoniously prepares the repast. Into a table-top skillet sizzling with soy sauce above a charcoal brazier, she pops morsels of beef, chicken or pork, bean curd, sliced scallions, lotus root, bamboo shoots, quartered onions and assorted other exotica. All this is accompanied by white rice, and an inexhaustible supply of sake.

Until a man, however well-traveled, has tasted the sukiyaki at Suehiro, he cannot, to our palate, truly call himself a connoisseur of Japanese cuisine. Despite tourist-baiting dancing girls and an unesthetic atmosphere of busy clatter, this four-story emporium serves the most delicately delicious beef sukiyaki we have ever eaten, prepared with porterhouse from their own herd of tenderly nurtured livestock. The sukiyaki at Doh-Hana, though a shade less epicurean, may be savored more by those to whom a setting of classic serenity, and a garden of surpassing beauty, are as essential as fine fare to complete dining pleasure. In both places, the price for dinner is just under $4 -- high for Japan, but certainly worth it.

Though a somewhat Westernized mecca for tourists and conventioneers, Ten-Ichi serves perhaps the finest tempura. Even so, we prefer the quietly traditional quarters of Hanacho, a tempura temple which has carefully preserved both the rituals and recipes of old Japan. Somewhat less accessible to downtown, Inagiku also offers a blending of superlative tempura, service and decor which merits your attention. Prices in all range between $2.50 and $3.60.

Two other national delicacies you'll want to savor are yakitori -- tidbits of chicken and vegetables mixed in batter and roasted over charcoal flames; and kabayaki, broiled split eels dipped in soy sauce. A pleasantly airy spot to sample these is the Tokyo Kaikan, a lantern-festooned roof restaurant which opens for dinner and dancing at 5:30 and stays open till about nine.

Newcomers are sometimes surprised and always gratified to discover that Japanese beef is among the most tender and succulent in the world -- due in some degree, at least, to the solicitous husbandry practiced by the farmers of Kobe in Southern Honshu, where the cows are lovingly massaged and fed beer to perfect the quality of their meat. Such beef, comparable to the best in the world, may be relished at hamburger prices in the Chaco, a tiny place serving enormous steaks charcoal-broiled before the diners; at nearby George's, an ingroupish hangout for the American colony, and at Frank's, the biggest (but not best) steak house in the city, a dressy, Los Angelese establishment complete with candlelight, chrome table carts and flaming desserts.

In the summer, Tokyo's garden restaurants provide a benignly pleasant atmosphere for leisurely gourmandizing; there are several worthy of note: Hamaseiho ánd Hannayen sport outdoor barbecues and sensible prices: and Happo-en, decorated in the style of a traditional inn, is nestled in a garden 300 years old, and serves excellent French cuisine, as well as Japanese, for under $4; but by all odds the finest of its genre and perhaps the best known of Tokyo's myriad restaurants is Chinzanso. Situated in a tranquil seventeen-acre park, this elysian rendezvous offers both Western-and Japanese-style dining rooms, as well as an alfresco garden grill where tender portions of beef, lamb and chicken are charcoaled over Mongolian Genghis Khan broilers -- all for the modest sum of around $3. You should try to get there in June, during which over a million fireflies, gathered from all over Japan, are released from cages like vast star showers into the landscaped gardens.

The venturesome, of course, will want to forage about in search of more obscure dining haunts -- less spectacularly appurtenanced, perhaps, but more genuinely indigenous. At Furusato, for example -- an old farmhouse which was dismantled, transported to its present site and reassembled -- the guests sit around an open hearth quaffing sake and savoring country-style meat, broiled chicken and fish both raw and cooked. The price tag here is high by Japanese standards (around $8 per person).

Another purely Japanese spot of gustatory interest is Fujino, a diminutive indoor cookshop about three blocks from the Imperial which specializes in okaribayaki, the traditional dish of samurai; the diners sit at a table centered by a grill resembling a samurai shield, upon which the chef carefully chars small beef filets, slices of sweet potatoes and onion, fresh fish, and, toward the end of the meal, the apogee of off-beat gastronomy: edible chrysanthemums. You top all this off with misoshiru, a savory soup of bean curd stock served in a black-lacquered bowl, at the bottom of which are two or three dozen tiny black clams.

Chinese restaurants of imperial rank also abound in this amazing city; for many of the finest Cantonese and Szechwan chefs in China fled the mainland with the Red take over to set up shop in Tokyo. Sun Ya is such a place; with a bill of fare featuring over 400 different offerings, this unprepossessingly decorated establishment has earned a reputation so far flung that a certain elite contingent of passengers on every incoming international flight refuses the last meal on board in order to whet their appetites to a keen edge for a monumental meal at Sun Ya on arrival. In order to sample the largest possible assortment of savories such as sharkfin soup, Peking duck and hundred-year-old eggs, take with you a quartet or more of friends. The total tab for four is absurdly low in view of the inordinate pleasures imparted: around $11.

If his palate is of an even more exotic turn, the feasting male can also go Asiatic in an assortment of Korean, Siamese and Indonesian restaurants. For Koreaphiles, there is Taisho-en, which serves pungently savory pulgogi -- strips of barbecued beef that have been steeped for hours in a marinated garlic sauce -- not recommended for delicate stomachs, or before a date. If you're fit to be Thaied, the Bangkok should have you feeling like a king. Indonesian buffs will find superb assuagement at Indonesia Raya and Sederhana.

For the diner craving more familiar fare, the polyglot variety of Tokyo's Continental cafés is munificent, their quality magnificent. A complete cataloging would be fodder for a doctoral thesis, so we'll content ourselves with listing some of the best. Gallic comestibles may be partaken of at the Crescent, which serves chef-d'oeuvre frogs' legs and commands an unexcelled view of the Eiffeltopping Tokyo TV tower (which in turn contains two restaurants of its own); and at France-ya, a minuscule cuisinery buried in a maze of side streets, which sets a bountiful table from apéritif to demitasse, but offers no alternatives to its table d'hote meals -- which are prix fixe at $10. But perhaps the rarest French repast in the city, if not in the Far East, is savored by the patrons of ultrachic Hananoki, whose kitchen is ruled by the redoubtable Shido, acknowledged Escoffier of the Orient. The prices, needless to mention, are unforgettable -- but so is the food. Italian cucina, including some 50 varieties of highly respectable pizza, is served with style, and usually with anchovies, at Nicola's; Germanic trenchermen will raise a seidel to the gemütlich gustatory pleasures of Lohmeyer's or Ketel's. If you prefer Hungarian sustenance, try Irene's Hungaria, where gypsy-bloused Japanese bartenders mix the best martinis in town. Headlining the Russian borsch circuit are Cossack, Volga and Balalaika, the last of which enjoys the dubious distinction of being the largest restaurant in Tokyo. If you find yourself longing for London fog and kidney pie, you'll find the latter, along with tankards of ale, Yorkshire pudding and roast mutton in hearty abundance at The King's Arms, a timbered tavern opposite the American embassy.

Having satisfied the inner man, you'll be set to swing into the organized pandemonium of the city's night life. Patrons of the sensual arts may wish to inaugurate the evening in a carnival side-show mood by venturing into Tokyo's triumvirate of temples to Eros -- the Nichigeki Musical Hall, the Shimbashi Embujo, and the Asakusa Theater -- wherein mass fertility rites are conducted three times daily, to the age-old syncopation of a trap drum and a blaring pit band, by brightly pigmented bouquets of Oriental blossoms.

In most of the nighteries, whether brightly lit, or intime, you will encounter in gratifying numbers the pretty phenomenon known as the Japanese hostess. Like all cosmopolitan cities, Tokyo exerts a magnetic attraction on good-looking women and the best of these seem to gravitate to the top clubs. For the same reason that one doesn't carry coals to Newcastle, you need not escort a date to these dens. These quasigeishas are hired by the management to provide tippling and terpsichorean companionship for visiting males. When the hatches are battened at 11:30, however, most of these occident-prone young ladies are amenable to a broad interpretation of Eastern hospitality.

Achieving an amiable entente with a hostess, you'll find, is about as difficult as gathering acorns under an oak tree. As soon as the waiter has seated you, he will inquire with bowing solicitude if you wish to imbibe á deux; you will say yes, adding that you prefer an English-speaking companion. Whereupon a procession of walking advertisements for the Paris fashion industry will wend their way to your table. After surveying the line-up with the care of a caliph, you simply reach out to clasp the hand of your choice; the remaining girls will prettily disperse. As she settles at your side, you ask her name. If she likes you, she will respond by proffering a card on which you will find her first name and two telephone numbers -- the club's and her own. Overcoming the temptation to learn her family name as well -- an inexcusable gaucherie at this point -- you conclude the formalities by giving her one of your own pasteboards.

The fee for this pleasant package -- company, canapés and cocktails for two -- usually starts at about $2 an hour in less pretentious cabarets, and just under $3 in the fancier boites; this in addition to a cover charge of from $1.50 to $4. At these rates your petite pal will stay with you -- dancing enthusiastically, fashioning charming small talk, sipping daintily (invariably a hybrid of Scotch and ginger ale), laughing at your jokes, lighting your cigarettes and handing you the traditional hot towel to wipe your hands preparatory to food and drink -- for as long as you like. In the improbable event that you become disenchanted with the company you're keeping, it's quite permissible to change hostesses in midstream without objection; the larger clubs have several hundred available.

The average Tokyo floorshow is reasonably diverting: ten or more demiclad chorus girls generally alternate with an Ed Sullivanesque parade of magicians, acrobats, singers and, if luck isn't with you, a team of indefatigable baton twirlers. Though the acts have an international flavor, top American talent is scarce, for the owners' yen for yen ordinarily precludes payment of the fees Yankee artists demand.

There is a fine semantic distinction between cabarets and night clubs which you might file away at this point: cabarets are strictly for stags, while night clubs cater to couples as well as to the man taking a solo flier; hostesses, of course, abound in both.

The three poshest clubs all throb in the rowdy Akasaka district: the Copacabana, the new Latin Quarter and the Hanabasha. Of these, the Copa gets our nod both as the biggest and the best -- but only by an inclined eyelash. Presided over by a Junoesque Japanese woman who calls herself Moma Cherry, it offers action on two fronts: downstairs, Hiroshi Watanabe's Star Dusters, blowing current U.S. pop hits, plus a show compounded of good second-string talent from abroad; and topside, a bar in pleasant proximity to a task force of waiting hostesses. Next door looms the gigantic Hanabasha, Tokyo's most cavernous tabernacle of joy. With a Brobdingnagian stage, Arabian Nightmare decor, and an amphitheatrical assemblage of postage-stamp tables, its central showroom is little short of awesome. Almost as an afterthought, there is also an adjacent lounge -- an expectedly cozy retreat with a wood-burning fireplace before which a covey of unattached hostesses keep warm while awaiting the customers' cues. In an unresolved argument that has been bandied about for years, some connoisseurs maintain that these girls are the pick of the city's crop -- and we agree. Across the street is the new Latin Quarter, an elephantine saloon comparable to its competition in decibels, if not in Jezebels. Spirits circulate in these three citadels for about a dollar a jolt; and the cover charge is usually $2.25, though it may go up for a big name entertainer from Stateside.

There is another Akasaka playpen which defies categorization: a vast supermarket for the senses known as Shin-Sekai. Among other attractions, this eight-story jukebox -- complete with bubbles and miasmatic colored lights -- contains a kiddyland, a Science-Magic Land, an echoing beer garden, a shopping center and an endless array of restaurants and public bathhouses. The roof is topped by a planetarium and a five-story pagoda limned in neon; descent from this height to a neighboring Buddhist temple can be negotiated swiftly by cable car. Gilding this enormous lily, Shin-Sekai also boasts the mostest in hostesses: there are an even thousand of them, and each can be individually paged by a stock-exchangelike system of flashing numbers on the walls of a colossal night-club arena in the building's innards.

While cabaret-hopping, your time and money will be best spent in either the Crown or the Queen Bee. The Crown -- a regally bedizened sanctum of the expense-account set -- boasts a pair of reasonably euphonious bands (Fujio Tsuruta and His Swinging Stars trade riffs with Koji Suyuki and His Eight Echos), a fairly fleshy floorshow and a full contingent of hostesses; the uncover charge is $1.35. Somewhat higher tariffed, the Ginza's Queen Bee is a buzzing hive celebrated for its equally ornate stage shows and French stained-glass decor. From your perch at its central revolving bar -- circumscribed by a cordon of beckoning but stationary Bee-girls -- a nod of the head will summon a friendly fellow passenger onto the carousel. As at the Crown, the pleasure of her company will come to $2.75 an hour.

For the curiosity-seeker, the mammoth Mimatsu, Tokyo's biggest cabaret, possesses some measures of statistical interest: it stages extravagant shows twice a night, blares continuous band music and leases tableside helpmeets for the entire evening -- all for the bargain-basement price tag of $2.70 plus drinks. Markdowns notwithstanding, many visitors prefer the less Atlantean scope of the Monte Carlo, a boite catering mainly to Japanese, but warmly esteemed by many clean-minded foreigners for its Saturday night "Bathtub Revue," featuring 40 suds-clad chorines engaged in mass ablutions.

Only the intrepid venture into the New Yorker, a bawdy foxhole filled to overflowing with underclad hostesses, primarily for the edification of GIs on furlough from Korea; or to the Albion, where le jazz hot cannonades from a battery of loud-speakers, and jungle-colored lights throb rhythmically to the titanic beat, while 30 warbling waitresses in skintight bodices demonstrate their broken-field running technique amidst the many-handed patrons.

By the time the 11:30 curfew rolls around, you and your consort will undoubtably have achieved sufficient rapport to warrant gambols in greener pastures. The fact that she has been forbidden to fraternize off the premises is merely an exercise in oriental face-saving on the part of the management; if your interest is reciprocated -- as it almost always is -- she will forthwith impart explicit directions to a nearby coffee-shop rendezvous, where you will be instructed to sit patiently while she switches from hostess finery to chic street clothes. Unlike the charade of misdirection practiced by Stateside dance-hall hostesses, she will always show up -- at which time she and you will then be free to paint the town champagne pink in one of the whee-hour bistros.

One such spot is the Aoi Shiro; ostensibly shuttering up with the rest at 11:30, this tiny club keeps the midnight oil burning via a venerable speakeasy gambit; a waiter wielding a flashlight guides you down a back corridor and thence through a murky obstacle course of stairs and storerooms to a curtained second-story retreat, where curfews -- and conventions -- are but the figments of a policeman's imagination.

But the real heartland of after-hour revelry is freewheeling Roppongi Street, where creaky joints like Liz Laurie's Club 88 and Club Shima detonate till dawn. These two dens extort neither cover nor minimum from their clientele, nor do they provide hostesses; but this last lack is strictly academic, for both clubs are invariably dense with yet uncommitted female functionaries from early closing nearby cabarets -- a golden last-ditch opportunity for liaison. Rather edible sushi and broiled specialties can be sampled at Liz Laurie's; next door at Club Shima you can feast on standard Chinese fare, then choose a dish for a dance to the unlikely combination of an electric organ sided by bongos. In any event, the possibility of reaching the nether end of the evening sans companionship -- except by choice -- is mathematically remote. Assuming that your overtures have been answered with approval, the sole remaining question is purely logistic: Quo vadis? Few of the major hotels -- Western or Japanese -- will countenance female visitors "during hours designated for sleeping." Therefore, the girl will probably volunteer her own quarters -- provided she doesn't sleep with six or seven relatives in the same room, as is often the case. In this infelicitous event, you have but to set out for the best of the late-hour inns which dot the downtown area: the Sekitei; surely among the most Elysian and esthetic of transient hotels to be found anywhere, its secluded bungalows, set among rock gardens and gurgling streams, rent for $8 to $14 an evening.

When the rising sun finally appears, you will discover that the city by day is almost as intriguing as at night and perhaps even more frenetic. The superabundance of its daytime diversions make slugabedding an impossibility, though Tokyo is not a spectacular sightseeing town in the usual tourist sense -- mainly because it is relatively new. It was not until 1868, under the aegis of the Emperor Meiji, that the town became the Japanese capital and received its present name (literally, Eastern Capital).

Built by Meiji, the Imperial Palace is located in the heart of Tokyo on a 250-acre tract encircled by a system of moats. Although most of its buildings were destroyed by an air raid in 1945, the massive masonry and watchtowers that remain have lost none of their serene monumentality. The general public is allowed to visit the grounds just twice a year, on January 2 and April 29, but you can behold its main entrance at any time from the famous double bridge, Nijubashi. The ashes of Meiji -- Hirohito's grandfather -- are contained in the Meiji Shrine, a structure sacred to Shintoists everywhere, set amid 175 acres of forested park lands. Heavily damaged by wartime bombing, the shrine has since been completely rebuilt; its original torii -- a magnificent gate fashioned from Cyprus wood over 1700 years old -- still stands astride its entrance.

A visit to one of the city's mammoth mercantile temples should be no less an experience, in its own way, for the staggering abundance and variety of their bounty. Uniquely native, however, is the virtual Japanese patent right on the ultimate secret weapon of huckstering: genuine courtesy. Clerks in these vast department stores turn handsprings to insure your satisfaction; uniformed girls greet you with a smile and a bow as you disembark from the escalator at each floor; and miniature roof-top Disneylands with scaled-down Ferris wheels, tiny zoos and fun houses beguile the little shavers while the grownups browse below. The finest of these soft-sell citadels are Taka-shimaya, whose resplendent Manhattan branch displays but a scattered sampling of the selection of goods sold in its Tokyo store; and archrival Mitsukoshi, the largest department store in the Orient. But your shopping sorties will, perhaps, be most conveniently and reasonably accomplished in the arcades of the big hotels, where the many precious Japanese artifacts available -- all incomparably superior to the flimsy ten-cent-store merchandise which once transformed the "Made in Japan" label into a symbol of shoddy workmanship -- include such treasures as Mikimoto pearls, lacquerware, silks, cloisonné, porcelain, brocades, china, fans, bamboo work, even samurai swords -- as well as a gleaming assortment of Japanese cameras and binoculars, which many claim have supplanted the German product as the finest in the world. Pearls, cloisonné and optical equipment, you might note, may be exported tax-free. In the arcade at the Imperial (and also less accessibly elsewhere about the city) are several highly skilled Hong Kong tailors who can produce a perfectly fitting, custommade suit of top-drawer English wool or tropical worsted, within 24 hours if necessary. At $30 to $40 per suit, you will quickly realize that Tokyo is the best place this side of Queen's Road in Kowloon for assembling a custom wardrobe.

Before packing up those precision-ground field glasses for shipment, the unregenerate beisboru (baseball) buff will want to hie himself out to Korakuen Stadium with 50,000 other fans of the Japanese national sport, for a magnified look at the local pro nines which have several times vanquished the mighty New York Yankees during tours through Tokyo. Aside from such charmingly Japanese embellishments as usherettes, female announcers, and a ceremonious pregame presentation of flowers to the team captains, these spirited contests are remarkably similar to our own -- even to pop-bottle projectiles from the mezzanine, punctuating such familiar umpirical declarations as "Sturaiku," "Boru," and "Ahootoh."

For more exotic sporting tastes, and for TV exiles long disenchanted with the amateur histrionics of American grunt-and-groan, a rousing sumo tournament -- held in January, May and September -- may revive not only respect but enthusiasm for the wrestling game. In this elaborately stylized contest of brawn and balance, two porcine behemoths, often weighing 350 pounds each, are pitted against one another in a fifteen-foot ring of hard-packed clay. After much inscrutable contemplation and ritual foot-stomping, both will spring simultaneously to the attack with a speed and agility remarkable for their bulk; in a matter of seconds, one will have bellied the other out of the ring and won the match. Though the contests begin at 9:30 in the morning, the best time to go is around 3:30 P.M. when the top-ranking leviathans lumber into action.

If sumo is not in season, a sprightlier manner of mayhem may be observed at the Kodokan Judo Hall, where you can flip over the dexterity of twoscore or more white-robed Judo practitioners and their pupils.

For those of gentler disposition, Tokyo offers an array of avocations adopted intact from Western models: one may play golf on the shortish nine-hole fairways at Takanawa and Shiba Park; play the ponies during weekend races at the modern tracks in Fuchu and Nakayama, both just outside the city; or indulge in such familiar divertissements as bowling, tennis, ice skating, skiing (in the not-too-distant Japanese Alps), or even table tennis -- a national obsession which has won the country repeated world championships.

After an afternoon of such sport, either as spectator or participant, you'll want to head next for one of Tokyo's many onsen, or Turkish-style public baths, to enjoy a full hour of slow steaming and gentle kneading from stem to stern, the more salubriously to emerge into the pleasures of the evening. The full treatment -- steam, suds and squeeze -- will be administered by a diminutive naiad for about $2.80.

As a refreshingly sedate contrast to the racy atmosphere of the previous night's inaugural, you might consider next an early visit to one of Tokyo's many geisha teahouses. Trained from infancy in the subtleties of entertaining men, geisha become accomplished in singing ancient songs, strumming the samisen and koto, traditional dancing, playing pleasantly harmless parlor games, and the art of making feather-light conversation. Despite persistent Western suspicions, they are simply what their name implies: "art person." Not that all geisha are strictly puritanical: many acquire affluent businessmen as their great and good friends. They are not, however, fair game for the visiting huntsman. Even so, you may wish to hire one for a private party; but bear in mind that the best of them charge $50 to $100 -- not yen -- for each pleasant, but decidedly not passionate, hour of entertainment.

If it's still early -- well before five -- you'll just have time to make the "late" show at the Kabuki-za. This monumental downtown edifice, gilded and fretworked to resemble a medieval palace, houses the largest legitimate theater in the world: a suitable setting for what is perhaps the most electrifying of the performing arts: kabuki. Combining elements of opera, dance, drama, concert and sometimes vaudeville in a framework of rigidly stylized conventions, this 300-year-old dramatic form never fails to startle and delight even those who understand neither a syllable of its eerily wailed dialog nor a convolution of its intricate four-hour plots of court intrigue and ancient legend.

No less absorbing, though somewhat less robustly enjoyable for many visitors, the Noh drama is a ritualized art form of such disembodied otherworldliness that some have said its plays seem to occur outside of time and space. Enacting melancholy stories of the legendary and the supernatural, male actors in enveloping silks and expressionless masks move with stately deliberation about a small, sparsely propped stage, speaking their lines in tones of ghostly hollowness and with a stylized archaic diction which even Japanese audiences seldom fully comprehend, though they know all the time-honored plots by heart. We suggest you give it a try.

Once you've undertaken a kabukithon, and know Noh, you'll be mentally prepared to appreciate the quaint and fragile beauty of bunraku, Japan's classic-puppet theater. Imported from China almost 500 years ago at a time when live drama had been banned by Imperial edict in an attempt to punish actors for their "loose living," bunraku is a kind of pocket-size kabuki in which amazingly expressive four-foot dolls, manipulated on stage by black-cloaked puppeteers, mime the plot lines of heroic ancient dramas against a background of diminutive trees and pavilions. Ducats for all of these theatrics cost between $2 and $3, and should be ordered a few days in advance.

In a lighter mood, you may want to catch one of the pleasantly frothy performances of the Takarazuka Opera Troupe -- familiar to those who saw it during a recent U.S. tour -- an all-girl company of singers, dancers and thespians specializing in sudsy Rudolph Frimlish operettas with shapely Prussians in boots and epaulets; and in Western-style musical revues of Dick Powell-Ruby keeler vintage -- complete with top hats, champagne bubbles, revolving stages and patriotic drill teams.

To an extent rivaled only by flick-happy Los Angeles, Tokyo bristles with movie houses great and humble, showcasing features from America, France, England, Italy and India as well as the local product for a public whose appetite for celluloid -- new or old, grades A to Z -- seems to know no bounds. In an attempt to equalize supply and demand, the Japanese film industry, centered largely in Tokyo, has become the most prolific in the world, grinding out four times the footage produced on our own shores every year. Though occasionally an impressive production such as Gate of Hell or Rashomon bobs to the surface of this stupendous outpouring, most are maudlin modern-dress soapers, juvenile science-fiction cheapies on the order of Godzilla, or low-budget samurai opuses featuring the fastest swords in the East in histrionics of such eye-rolling absurdity that they're actually great fun to watch -- without a word of translation.

If you're momentarily spent with sporting life and yearn to idle away a quiet evening on the tatami, settle back on a cushion and flip on the ubiquitous terebi. You'll soon discover that Japanese video fare is a sukiyaki of the good and the ghastly: homemade panel shows, soap operas and samurai Easterns, liberally larded with a number of American ingredients such as Wagon Train and Gunsmoke; enriched with tidbits of kabuki and educational programs on flower arrangement and formal tea ceremony; and spiced with a sweetmeat savored every Sunday night by a vast majority of the male viewing audience: The Pink Mood Show, a Minskyesque revue featuring old-fashioned burlesque blackouts, patriotic tableaux, and a delegation from the chorus line at the Nichigeki in a memorable mass demonstration of terpsichorean expertease.

On the following day -- or soon thereafter -- you should make it your business to explore the pleasures of Tokyo's multitudinous hinterlands. Just two hours distance by crack express train, for instance, are the rushing mountain streams and crystalline air of Nikko, site of the great tomb of Iyeyasu Tokugawa, a shrine which stands today as one of man's most prodigious handiworks. Eleven miles to the west, reachable only by a car-width road of cliff-hanging hairpin turns -- or via a breath-taking cablecar ride -- are the glass-smooth waters of Lake Chuzenji, a tranquil mountaintop resort rimmed with dark forest, dotted with tiny lakeside temples, and rumbling with the distant thunder of Kegon Falls plunging to the valley below in a cataract higher than Niagara. The wise traveler will allow at least two days for this unforgettable excursion, with an overnight stay in the turn-of-the-century splendor of the Nikko Kanaya Hotel, just a few steps from the main gate of the Tokugawa Shrine. Singles run around $3.50, doubles around $7.50, for either of which advance reservations are essential.

Fujiyama, an extinct 12,000-foot volcanic cone of almost perfect symmetry, has long been the country's most venerated and spectacular natural wonder. Three hours by rail from Tokyo, or four by car through the patchwork quilt of rice paddies and rolling hills northwest of the capital city, the foot of the holy mountain is dotted with resort hotels commanding matchless vistas of its towering profile. The best of these, in our judgment, is the aptly named Fuji View Hotel on the banks of Lake Kawaguchi, on whose mirroring surface the image of the nearby peak can best be seen from the windows of thatch-roofed cottages (both Japanese and Western style) available for $16.50 a night.

Whatever your side-trip itinerary, you'll probably want to spend the glowing twilight of your sojourn back in the swirl and clamor of Tokyo itself, savoring the pleasures of a city as boisterous and sedate, as mercurial and serene, as the engagingly ambivalent people who populate it -- until at last you find yourself uttering that appropriate but somewhat shopworn valediction: sayonara.