The rear of the house is Gone with the Wind territory, with a colonnaded verandah that could have supported Scarlett O’Hara. We stood on it and watched a Japanese model take part in a fashion shoot in the garden below. Scarlett may have approved but the Mitsibushi's probably wouldn’t.

Pride of place on the first floor was given to what was deemed to have been the first Western-style flush toilet in Japan. It remains there still, a monument to British porcelain and the forerunner of a trend which the Japanese now appear to have taken to extreme lengths. Our hotel lavatory had more buttons and switches than a jumbo jet and appeared to do everything apart from making tea.

The biggest surprise of the house, however is in the left wing, where you walk down a corridor to emerge in a classic Japanese-style home. This is, apparently, where the Mitsibushi family really lived, keeping the Western residence as a meeting place for Western guests. With its austere lines, but exquisite workmanship it higlights the dichotonomy between East and West that still exists in Japan today.

Kyu Iwasaki-tei Gardens: Yushima (Chiyoda Line) or Okachimachi stn (JR Yamanote). Open daily 9am-5pm.

In place of cones

There was a fascinating ritual outside our hotel in Tokyo every morning. We were staying at the Hotel Mercure, a little haven of French style situated in a side street in upmarket Ginza. At the end of the street there were some roadworks.

As we left the hotel entrance and walked down the narrow street towards the excavations, we’d see the traffic policeman, immaculately dressed with collar, ties, lanyard and peaked caps on the other side of the road. As they approached each other they would gravely bow and then move on.

On some mornings there would only be five or six, swinging their warning batons as they walked, not too slowly, not too fast, along the pavement. Other mornings there would be more and very early on one day we saw 20 or more being given a pep talk by their superintendent in the bay opposite the hotel.

Where in Britain, similar roadworks would be guarded by a few dozen cones and one bored worker operating a stop/go sign in Japan it was action stations all the time. As the traffic grew heavier, the policemen would work themselves into a frenzy, whistling down cars, making room for delivery trucks and letting taxis pass. This buzz of activity came to a climax during one weekend when horse races were transmitted live on the large TV screen at the end of the street. As punters, policemen and the odd van or two jostled for space, the activity on the street almost matched the excitement on the screen.

And then one morning we came out and the roadworks had been completed during ther night. The road looked as if it had never been touched and all the traffic policeman had slowly melted away.

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