“Listen,” sang John Lennon in his inimitable Liverpool twang, “... do you want to know a secret, promise you won’t tell.” The crowd in Abbey Road, listened intently. John adjusted his familiar steel-rimmed glasses and crooned, conspiratorially, into the microphone. “Closer, let me whisper in your ear... ” It was Beatlemania all over again, except that this Abbey Road was in Tokyo, 6,000 miles away from the North London one and John Lennon was actually Mamoru Yoshii, who not only looks like the Liverpool legend but sounds like his twin brother.

Yoshii sing and plays with the Parrots, a Beatles soundalike band who, for the past 10 years, have been the main attraction at Abbey Road, a club in the Roppongi area of Tokyo. With Takeshi Noguchi as Paul, Akihiro Matsuyama as George, Teruyuki Matsuzaki as Ringo and Fumiya Matsuyama in the Billy Preston role as keyboards player, the group appear up to five times a night to sing Beatle songs to crowds of enthusiastic Japanese and a quite a few Western visitors too.

We were there to meet the parents of my son’s girlfriend. Oliver had been working in Tokyo for several months and was going out with Juri, a Japanese girl he’d met at university in Kent. It was our first trip out to see him and friends had recommended Abbey Road as a good place to meet. It’s small without being too intimate and if you get there early you can get a good table by the stage.

With Juri’s parents having about the same grasp of English as we had of Japanese, it was never going to be an evening where the conversation flowed freely – or so we thought. But with the Parrots singing away, a few bottles of wine and several plates of Japanese pizza (thin crust and very more-ish) it turned out to be multicultural success. Smiles and sign language helped. Juri translated like a woman possessed and by the end of the evening we were lifelong friends.

And it seems we weren't the only ones to be impressed. The Arctic Monkeys recently toured Japan and were smitten too. They returned to play Abbey Road last night (Mar 27) - and now they've invited The Parrots to support them at two gigs in the UK in July.

It's not the cheapest of evenings — we seem to have spent well over £100 by the end of the night — but if money can’t buy you love, it can buy you a good time.

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Abbey Road Japan

A house that's not a home

A grand two story wooden villa that wouldn’t look out of place in Cannes or Biarritz is one of the more unusual tourust sights in Tokyo. That Kyu Iwasaki-tei has been preserved when most of the city looks as if it had been built yesterday is a small miracle. That the building celebrates the work of an English architect is perhaps a greater one.

Josiah Condor, born in London in 1852, was invited to Japan in 1877 where he taught Western architecture to Japanese students. One of his biggest jobs came in 1896 when he was given the task of designing a mansion for Hisaya Iwwasaki, a Tokyo big shot whose father had formed Mitsubishi – a financial giant even then. The estate, near Ueno Park had once consisted of 20 buildings. Now only the Condor-designed Western residence, a billard room that looks like a Swiss chalet and a Japanese house remain.

We came across it after several missed turns and a detour into a children’s playground on a slightly damp spring day. Outside it's all fancy shutters and a imposing pillared entrance. Inside it’s Jacobean-come-Victorian with wood-panelled ceilings, a grand staircase and empty but impressively-sized rooms. As we padded along in our slippers it wasn’t hard to imagine the Mitsibushi walking the polished floors, especially as pictures of them in all their glory adorn the conservatory.

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