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* 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 to this is that the Japanese yen is not strong at the moment, especially against the pound, so our money is going 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 way back in the 1980s, when it was the centre of the world, and due to the tech boom, it was incredibly expensive. But the world has moved on and in many ways Tokyo hasn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s still not 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 that we could in just 72 hours.

The hotel

Our base was a newly opened Yotel in the centre of the busy but sanitised Ginza district – the first one to open in Japan.

And you may think that the name and style of Yotel is a Japanese brand, but you’d be wrong. It was a British company set up by a Japanophile who also created YO! Sushi. So having one in Tokyo is a big deal.

It costs around £175 a night to stay there and the room is exactly what you’d expect, small but perfectly formed with a reclining smart bed also acting as your sofa, an automatic toilet that has a button that plays a jingle when you finish your business and a mirror that opens to reveal an ironing board.

There’s also the obligatory robot that brings you room service, which has its own name and chats to you if you meet it in the lift.

Shopping and drinking

But Tokyo is not about staying in the hotel. Ginza is one of the main shopping districts, with the world’s biggest Uniqlo no less. Clothes are cheaper than in Britain and you can pick up five full outfits for less than £500, all with the cutting-edge design Japan is known for.

Just off into the side streets, things get cheaper. We visited Roar Coffee, where a toasted Cuban sandwich is less than £5, and my salted-caramel latte was £3.50. Wages are relatively low in Japan and prices, by and large, haven’t moved on since the 80s.

This is why stressed businessmen with low disposable incomes frequent all-you-can-drink bars from the princely sum of 1500 yen (that’s £8).

A beer generally is a few pounds in a bar and even cheaper in the 7-Eleven and equivalent markets that do good fried chicken at knock-down prices. If you are after a drink, then I highly recommend Golden Gai area, which is a maze of tiny bars no bigger than living rooms where you have to peer in to see if there is space and almost ask permission of the bar staff before sitting down.

In there you can smoke (but strangely, not on the street), so get ready to go back to pre-smoking-ban Britain and have your clothes smelling from the night before. It’s 600 yen or £3 if you want to buy a pack of cigarettes and join in.

In one, we were talked into a small glass of snake sake, where we could see the unfortunate fella in the jar. Admittedly, this was £15 a glass, but hell, it had a snake in it.

Eating out

Filled full of serpentine charm we got chatting to the locals via Google Translate and the universal language of Manchester United. I found people spoke good English, but with such little time we didn’t really get off the beaten track.

Eating out is not expensive. On the first night, we went to Kushiyaki Bistro Fukumimi Ginza, a traditional Japanese restaurant, where we had to take our shoes off and sit at a low table to enjoy beef and chicken skewers, tasty tofu, and some of the best spring rolls I have ever had. Who’d have thought adding cheese was the missing ingredient?

After multiple Kirin beers and local sake we completed the cliché by heading to a local karaoke bar where we got our own private room and buzzed for drinks. However, if I hear Elvis’ Are You Lonesome Tonight start once again, I will long for a Godzilla strike to end it all.

Japanese culture

No trip to Tokyo is complete without a trip to Harajuku district with its iconic Takeshita (no, you haven’t read that wrong) and Cat streets, where there’s cosplay, anime and your senses are ripped from you and reassembled.

Especially at the iconic Shibuya crossing, the busiest in the world, where hundreds of people line up, wait for the green light and battle Instagrammers, Mario karts and cretinous British tourists like myself to make the other side as thousands watch on across the world on webcams. All that is free and well worth it.

We did the touristy things like sushi making, crafting our own chopsticks (that was fun) and a traditional tea ceremony (7700 yen a pop) where I wore a kimono and channelled my inner Obi-Wan Kenobi for an enjoyable afternoon.

Be aware that these are tourist traps and expensive, but do give you a good sense of traditional Japan. As does the busy Tsukiji Outer Market where you walk up and down and can have oysters (800 yen each), sashimi sushi that was so fresh it was still wriggling (700 yen) and even matcha ice cream for a reasonable price. Reasonable and a little weird were the order of the day in my whistle-stop tour.

Even the must-dos such as the iconic Tokyo Tower are only 1200 yen, entrance to Hamarikyu Gardens was 300, while getting around on the metro is easy and cheap.

Yes, Japan on a budget is achievable – as long as you don’t want to make chopsticks and eat your own hand-rolled sushi while dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

*Some people have green hair and a labubu tied to their waists

Booking it

Andy stayed at the YOTEL Tokyo Ginza in Minato City, a prime area for shopping, dining and nightlife that is a three-minute walk from Shimbashi Station. It has 244 rooms, many of which feature ‘SmartBed™’ motorised beds that can recline and convert into sofas. The hotel also has an on-site all-day dining and bar restaurant, as well as self-service check-in/out kiosks.

Andy flew from London Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda via British Airways.