NO one was spitting on the street, right, left and centre. Sometimes the wind can take it backwards, I have discovered to my obvious displeasure. The entire day, and I got down in almost a dozen train stations, I did not hear one angry or loud voice, but I went from back lanes of the suburb to wide streets of the financial district. I had to lay on the road to catch the full profile of a very tall tower on my digital SLR, although I 'can on' the older types (no free ads allowed), and my clothes were not the least soiled. This was Tokyo, which a little over half a century ago, was capital of a country ravaged by the Americans and their allies in a war this city lost.

That is another way of letting you know that I am now visiting the Japanese capital, but the dropping of the name of the camera, albeit in camouflage, was purely coincidental.

Every random person I approached (in crude sign language) for help, generally direction to a place, were most generous in going out of their way, or they bowed and bowed to convey in silence that they did not understand me, and that they were truly sorry. Rarely will you see a nation hand-in-glove with progress and humility, development and cordiality, success and civility. The Japanese are writing a chronicle for the world to follow.

Having the bitter experience of mistakenly being served pork (or so I thought) in another country, despite telling the waiter vocally and in signage that 'I do not take pork', I chose to go for Pizza in a hut (no free ads allowed), feeling certain that I could order a medium vegetable preparation of the Italian delicacy. No, I am not naming the other country, because I intend to visit it within the week, and their visa section is like a real visa section. At Tokyo's one of many outlets of the global pizza giant, I was bowled out by seeing over three dozen varieties, and the food fragrance was nostalgically Roma, but everything was in written in Japanese, or so I guessed from the intriguing script. The very polite server and I made no headway in our half-minute exchanges, when I had the flash bulb of an idea: G****e translation. (No freed ad, I already explained) But, my phone did not have any net connection.

I raced back to my hotel room in the same block, although I had not had any lunch, but you gain strength when you can smell the food you think you will have. Earlier my in-flight breakfast after we took off from Shanghai was marred when co-passenger on the next seat, a Hong Kong real estate facilitator called Natina, admitted that most of it was pork. In my Wi-Fi room, I quickly translated vital sentences like "I don't eat this and that" and that "I want a pizza made only with vegetables", which translated looks like 'yasai'. But, in any non-English domain, I do not trust my eyes and I always show the foreigner what came translated on my mobile.

By the time I returned to the PHD people, the server had changed and this man could even say 'shrimp' after I flashed him the translated sentences. My night was saved with a most delicious half-half that I downed with a C**e Nothing in two go's.

Public transport in the cities that have done excellently in this sector, and Tokyo is one of them, is reliable, efficient and inexpensive in comparison with the local cost of living. Moving about is not a problem if you can read the well-organised layout maps, and the connections between lines is mind-boggling. Thankfully the station names are also written in English. As a grumbling query was brewing in my mind as to why more instructions were not in English, I quickly realised how difficult it must be for the Japanese who knows no English in the London Underground. I also noted that every third person on a train was thumbing his or her mobile, which is now a world-wide malady.

Ever since I went to cover the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France, I have been pledging to learn the language the first thing I would do on my return, but alas, I have not yet taken up French, or later Spanish, or Portuguese, or for that matter Indonesian or Chinese or Korean or Mongolian; Japanese is the latest addition. I absolutely envy people who can speak in a language I do not understand, and that pretty much includes everything outside Bangla, English, Hindi and Urdu, even if those wonderful utterances be the words they learnt from their mother.

The author is a practising Architect at BashaBari Ltd., a Baden-Powell Fellow Scout Leader, and a Multiple Paul Harris Fellow.