I liked the sign in my Tokyo hotel bathroom. 'Don't be afraid of our toilet!' it said. It was indeed an object of terror, with all its push-button sprays and geysers. My big fear was that it would sneak up and give me a Brazilian wax.
I wish there were signs all over Tokyo saying, 'Do not be afraid of our subway system, our traffic, our gadgets, our food, our culture, our language.' My first reaction to the city was blind panic. Not because anything bad happened - on the contrary, Tokyo is one of the safest cities in the world - but because it is so hectic, so confusing, I felt like a country bumpkin.
On my first day in Tokyo someone handed me a subway map and said, 'It's quite easy really.' You must be joking! The map is like one of those unravel-a-ball-of-wool puzzles, and half the stations don't have names in English. Taking a taxi is no better unless you've remembered to get someone to write your destination for you in Japanese. And Tokyo is vast. Even from the tops of skyscrapers you never see more than a fragment of the city. Everyone says that on a clear day you can see Mount Fuji but nobody I met had ever seen it, presumably because there are no clear days.
Fortunately my hotel, the Four Seasons at Marunouchi, was a soothing haven of calm in the flashing neon wonderland of the Ginza district outside. I might have spent all my time cocooning with my 54in plasma screen were it not for the lure of Japanese food. The love affair started on the ANA flight out when I thought, 'Oh this is good, I want more of this' - which is not something you normally think about airline meals. Thereafter it just got better and better, each meal more delicious than the last. And it was the two cheapest meals I ate - a noodle bar lunch in Tokyo Central Station and a sushi breakfast at Tokyo Fish Market, both under £5 - which linger most fondly in my memory.
Tokyo Fish Market - Tsukiji - is one of the wonders of the world; the only thing wrong with it is that it all happens before dawn. I managed to cadge a lift with the French chef from the Four Seasons, Jerome Legras, who trained at the George V in Paris but is now utterly smitten with Japanese cuisine. He can't do his own buying because his Japanese is still not good enough - 'They think I am a tourist, pah!' - but he has a dealer who buys for him. As we squeezed down the narrow, cobbled alleys between stalls, I was touched to see that Legras kept consulting his 'bible' - a very well-thumbed illustrated guide to Japanese marine life.
And my goodness it was necessary. There are species you've never dreamed of, real monsters of the deep, that make you think twice about ever swimming in the sea again. At one point, hurling myself into a stack of crates to avoid one of the Mighty Car barrows that whizz down the aisles at terrifying speed, I found myself face to face with what looked like a row of giant dildos standing up on their shells and waving at me.
We went to the tuna auctions in a freezing shed, where the great barrel-like frozen tuna were laid out on pallets on the floor. Authorised dealers with number badges were going round examining them, using an icepick to chip away a bit of flesh from just above the tuna's tail and then shining a flashlight through it to see its colour and texture. The auction began with a great ringing of bells and cleared about 100 tuna in less than half an hour.
Afterwards we went to see what M Legras's buyer had bought, and he carved slices out of each tuna with an electric saw. Legras pronounced one slice 'too nervous' - I think he meant the white lines in the flesh were too close together - but passed the others. Then he said we must go for breakfast at one of the sushi bars round the edges of the market. There were dozens of these but he insisted we go to Sushi Dai in aisle six, even though it meant queuing for half an hour in the cold.
It was a tiny place - just 12 seats round a counter in a room the size of a railway carriage - but from the first bite I realised I was in the presence of greatness. I also learned the three great rules of sushi eating: 1) eat it with your fingers; 2) eat it as one mouthful - even if it gives you chipmunk cheeks, never bite it in half; 3) turn the sushi upside down to dip the fish side, not the rice, in the soy sauce.
That sushi breakfast was definitely my best experience in Tokyo, closely followed by all the other meals I ate there, and I am now a slavering devotee of Japanese cuisine. But my single foray into understanding Japanese culture was a complete failure. I went to Chado Kaikan, a place that runs tea-ceremony classes, priced bizarrely at 2,000 yen (about £12) for foreigners, 3,000 for Japanese. It was in a traditional Japanese house - wooden floors, sliding paper screens, tatami mats - run by tiny, exquisite women in kimonos, one of whom spoke English.
She pointed out the features of the room: the firebox recessed into the floor, with a charcoal brazier to heat the kettle, the lacquer tea stand, the mats for us to sit on, the 'flower arrangement' (one twig, one flower), the inevitable boring calligraphy scroll. We, the pupils, had to kneel on mats round the edge of the room. Unfortunately I can't do kneeling, so I was allowed to crouch agonisingly in a corner like a Great She-Elephant moaning in pain.
After all the explaining, a big, loopy-looking man in a blue kimono with a bow on his bottom came gliding in on tippy-toes bearing a teapot. Our guide explained that he was the Grand Tea Master and the fifteenth descendant of tea masters. He was also a famous potter and had made the teapot himself. The teapot was the sort of lumpy porridge earthenware I associate with St Ives circa 1960 but everyone else gasped politely at its beauty.
Then the guide announced that we would learn how to take a sweet and handed out instruction sheets: 'Raise the kashibachi (bowl) slightly to express thanks. Put the kashibachi back down. Place your kaishi (paper napkin) in front of you. Place the folded edge towards you. Take the hashi (chopsticks) with your right hand. Re-hold the hashi using your left hand. Steady the kashibachi with your left hand. Take one of the sweets with the hashi. Place it on the kaishi. Re-hold the hashi again. Wipe the tip of the hashi with a corner of the kaishi. Put the hashi back to the kashibachi.' All this, just to bag a nasty, soggy bean cake, and of course the beastly thing fell apart the minute I touched it.
Then the guide announced: 'The Tea Master is now going to put his tea whisk in boiling water to soften it.' I only realised eons later that this was one of the highlights of the whole event, equivalent to, say, Rodolfo singing 'Che gelida manina' in the first act of La Boheme. At the time it just looked like a fat bloke putting a whisk in water.
After much instruction in how to accept a cup of tea (take bowl in right hand, transfer to left hand, bow, rotate bowl twice in clockwise direction, etc etc) we were allowed to drink it - frothy green pond slime - before embarking on the true marathon of admiring the tea caddy and bowls.
Our tea ceremony lesson lasted an hour and felt like a decade. It gave new meaning to the term exquisite boredom. But a real tea ceremony lasts four hours - four hours of kneeling on tatami mats, not speaking (only the main guest is allowed to speak to the host and no one is allowed to speak to the Tea Master) with only two cups of tea - one thick, one thin - and two red bean sweets by way of reward. If this is the traditional Japanese idea of fun, no wonder the young are so enchanted by Western culture.
I think you probably have to be young to appreciate Tokyo - you also have to be pretty rich. Everything is expensive, except electronic goods which are amazingly cheap in the discount shops round Akihabara station. Basically you can buy two digital cameras, or a whole litter of robot dogs, for the price of one here, so in theory you could pay for an evening's karaoke (a socking £700 in our case, for a party of six) by stocking up on all the latest gadgets. If you are a small, deranged teenager you can also buy peculiar clothes with names like Hysteric Glamour around Harajuku. But you'd still have to be pretty rich to begin with.
Tokyo is a hard, hustling city that makes New York seem sluggish, London positively bucolic. It was too bewildering for me. But if you've got the energy and the cash and a limitless appetite for weirdness, go for it, especially now when the yen is cheap.
· Lynn Barber flew from London Heathrow to Tokyo with ANA (020 7224 8866; www.ana-europe.com), with tickets starting at £720 return.
She stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo Chinzan-so, with double rooms from £299, and at the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Marunouchi, with double rooms from £373. For reservations call 00 800 6488 6488 or visit www.fourseasons.com.
· For further information on Japan go to www.seejapan.co.uk and www.tcvb.or.jp
