Ten out of yen for Tokyo

Tha Japanese city is surprisingly good value says ANDY GILPIN - as long as you spend like a local

- ANDY GILPIN

Right, let's dust down some myths and misconceptions about Tokyo. It’s not a city gridlocked with traffic, not everyone has green hair and a labubu doll tied to their waists* and giant mutated lizard attacks are not prevalent. And it’s not expensive - in fact, it's pretty cheap.

The caveat is that the yen is currently weak, especially against the pound, so money goes a lot further. It was around 180 yen to the pound when I visited, which is punchy.

The misnomer that it’s a sky-high-priced city comes from the 1980s, when it was the economic centre of the world and, thanks to the tech boom, incredibly expensive.

But the world has moved on and in many ways Tokyo hasn't. That doesn’t mean it’s not still clean, functional and an assault on the senses, because it is - just not at a price. We had a mission: see as much of the sprawling city as we could in just 72 hours.

Our base was a newly opened Yotel in the busy but sanitised Ginza district - the first to open in Japan. You may think the name and style of Yotel is Japanese, but you'd be wrong. It’s a British brand created by a Japanophile who also founded YO! Sushi.