It has been five years since I last visited Tokyo. In the past, I went there mainly for stories. Those were business trips paid by the newspapers that sent me there. This time, I am going on my own and I don't know what to expect.

Everyone I talk to has horror stories to tell about the exorbitant cost of the city. But I remember I usually spent more on reporting trips to India, Indonesia and the Philippines than Japan. In fact, it is much easier, and safer, to stay on the cheap in Tokyo than, say, in Manila or Bangalore.

Take hotels. In Manila, for instance, you will have very little choice but to stay in one of the star-rated international hotels which charge the same, if not higher, room rates as those in Hong Kong. You can, of course, opt to stay in a local hotel for a much lower rate per night. I would not recommend it, although I have never stayed in any of them.

But I did spend a few nights in a relatively small local hotel in Kuala Lumpur, and have regretted it since. There were, of course, the occasional bugs, as could be expected in any form of abode in the tropics. But it was the constant noise from the beat-up air-conditioner, the people living in the next rooms and those chatting and running around in the corridors that irritated the most.

For some unknown reason, the floor of the attached toilet in my room was always wet. I tried to look for the leak thinking that if I could somehow plug it all would be well. With the help of two attendants in singlets and shorts, we failed completely to locate the faulty joint. It seemed that every pipe was leaking.

In Tokyo, I almost always stayed at the hotels frequented by small businessmen that cost less per night than a modest Holiday Inn in Manila or Bangkok. My favourite was a highly popular small hotel in Toranomon in downtown Tokyo, which caters to travelling businesspeople from around the country. The rooms are very small, but they are always clean and neat. All the basics a traveller may want, including two beds, a television set, desk and closet, are somehow squeezed into that tiny space. They even manage to fit a tiny bathtub into the bathroom.

Dining in Tokyo can be very expensive. A hamburger at McDonald's in the city costs nearly twice as much as in Hong Kong or Shanghai.

But there are no shortages of street-side eateries serving delicious wheat noodles in steaming hot soup or Japanese-style pancakes laced with dried fish flakes. I ate these staples at many different places in Japan and never got sick once.

Because I have a highly sensitive stomach, I would not even eat at the street-side eateries in Hong Kong. A former colleague of mine used to laugh at my squeamishness. He once went on a reporting trip to Bangkok and came back with some bugs inside him. Getting rid of them required the removal of several feet of his guts.

Many years ago, an American journalist visited Tokyo for the first time when I was working there as a stand-in for a reporter who was on leave. I took her to a typical neighbourhood bar, which served not only beer and sake but also a wide variety of snacks. What impressed her most was not the food nor the jovial company of the Japanese businessmen, who were absolutely fascinated by her natural blonde hair, but rather the cleanliness of the toilet in that hole-in-the-wall establishment.

I never did much shopping when I was in Tokyo. There is really nothing I need or want in Tokyo that I could not have bought more cheaply in Hong Kong. I once bought an MD-recorder at a Sony store in Ginza only to find out later that the street price of the same model in Hong Kong was 15 per cent less than the discounted price I paid.

But the shopping experience in Tokyo is something that is almost always worth writing home about. After paying for my inexpensive sweater at the counter, I expected the sales assistant to hand me the parcel she was holding. But instead, she accompanied me to the exit and only then did she offer the parcel to me, with a smile and a deep bow. Having had to put up with rude sales assistants in Hong Kong for so many years, I was moved.

My impression of Tokyo has always been good. I cannot wait to find out if it has changed much. I will keep you posted.

(China Daily 12/28/2006 page4)