A LOO FOR ALL SEASONS | May 19th 2008

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The world has suddenly discovered that Tokyo is a gourmet's paradise, writes Dominic Ziegler, The Economist's Tokyo bureau chief. Look no further than the city's lavatories for evidence of its passion for connoisseurship ...

Forgive me: I usually shut the door to my bathroom, but just this once let me show you my lavatory in Tokyo. Without electricity, it is a white elephant, incapable even of flushing. When connected to the grid, it is a marvel of ingenuity and po-faced perfection of the sort found in superior French waiters.

When you enter the room, the seat rises in salute. Clipped to the wall, an infra-red remote-control panel boasts no fewer than 38 buttons that operate the lavatory's functions. It is not just that the seat can be heated, or indeed the room, on a timer if required. A gentle coursing of water can be ordered up to hide sounds (a particular favourite among women users, the makers say).

Above all, the Toto Neorest excels at the bidet functions. Skilful manipulation of the control panel delivers a near-infinite combination of washing and drying experiences. Water from a retractable nozzle can be sent in waves or pulses, as a fine mist or in strong squirts, to precise parts--if you are capable of identifying them--of your body's lower reaches. A warm drying air is then dispensed through the same nozzle. You can almost feel a French-waiter smugness as the machine sends you on your way.

I mention my lavatory because Western food writers who descend on Tokyo cannot seem to help writing about similar lavatories in their hotel rooms. They are, after all, almost the first direct experience of the city. And with this much care taken of food on the way out, the writers conclude, imagine the care taken on the way in.

Possibly they are right. The world has suddenly discovered that Tokyo is a gourmet's paradise. Outside Tokyo, this was secret outside a tight-knit freemasonry of gluttons. But it burst into the open late last year, when Michelin chose Tokyo as the object of its first guide beyond the eating bastions of Europe and the United States.

All around the world, diners looked up from their plates in astonishment: restaurants in Tokyo had gathered more Michelin stars than Paris, London and New York put together. A number of the stars were won by restaurants serving French, Italian and indeed Spanish cuisine.

But most went to Japanese restaurants. And here, the range is striking. Certainly, many starred restaurants serve kaiseki, Japan's multi-course equivalent of haute cuisine, myriad small dishes organised for taste, texture, look and colour. Others, though, specialise only in tempura, or teppanyaki, sushi, soba noodles and, yes, fugu, the pufferfish that is lethal if contaminated with the toxic internal organs.

For all that, to concentrate on Michelin misses a trick or three. The guide is criminally silent about Tokyo's ubiquitous izakaya, for which "pub" serves as an inadequate translation, but where some of Tokyo's finest food and certainly greatest conviviality can be found. And it gives no hint of Tokyo's extraordinary array of fast-food options--a glorious burst of taste and experience at best, a monstrous affront if it's four o'clock in the morning, your lover has left you, and the convenience store shelves have run out of all but yakisoba dog (cold fried noodles in a hotdog).

For a fleeting visitor, the Tokyo food experience is a life-changing one. A resident is incomparably luckier. If not every day, then certainly every week promises a revelation. After all, some 147,000 eating establishments, large but mostly small, serve the capital's discerning diners. I have been here for something over two years, but am barely scratching the surface of what the city has to offer.

Food and lavatories combine to offer insight in another way--as evidence of a Japanese passion for connoisseurship. This is, after all, a country that has a glossy monthly magazine for male admirers of bespoke shoes, called Last. More abundant, by far, are magazines, pamphlets and television programmes given over to food. Only sex sells more--though in Tokyo, naturally, the two are often commercially combined, as in the no pantsu shabu-shabu.

In Tokyo, the food publications tell you which restaurants to visit and what dishes to order. They talk about the ceramics upon which the dishes are delivered, and give hints about how to prepare a restaurant's speciality at home. They tell housewives how to shop in the streets around Tsukiji, Tokyo's pantry and the world's fish market: "Feel a little like a pro", runs the headline of one pamphlet.

And they "discover" districts or individual restaurants that in fact have happily been doing business for generations and sometimes centuries--which is all part of their newly discovered charm. There is even a magazine called Tokyo Jocho Shokudo (Tokyo Emotional Restaurants), which has a special section on establishments that boast cutting-edge lavatories, with glossy pictures to prove it. So here, at least, the circle is closed.

(Dominic Ziegler is Tokyo bureau chief of The Economist. This column is part of his week-long diary about Tokyo food, published on Economist.com. He wrote about Japanese robots for the Spring issue of Intelligent Life.)