The place where tourist scams and rip-offs don't exist
The Palace Hotel Tokyo has all the facilities you would expect from a luxury, five-star hotel.
There are eight very good restaurants on site; four bars, including Royal Bar, one of my favourite purveyors of fine cocktails in the city, if not the world. There's a high-end pastry shop. There are artisanal craft stores. There's a spa, a club lounge, and a restaurant beside the Imperial Palace moat that serves one of the world's great breakfasts.
But then, there's also something you might not expect: a 7-Eleven. A humble old convenience store.
Head to the basement level of one of the world's most prestigious hotels and you can pick up a can of Sapporo beer for about $2, and maybe a 'tamago-sando', or egg sandwich, for about the same again, and a perhaps a chestnut Mont Blanc to round out your bill at something like $6.
Amazing. Though, maybe the most unusual thing is that this is not unusual in Tokyo, or throughout Japan, at all. The Keio Plaza, over in Shinjuku, also has a convenience store on site. Many luxury hotels do.
It means no more getting stiffed $20 for a mini-bar drink if you don't feel like it. No more heart attacks over the bill for your dodgy room service if that's not the mood you're in. You can just press a button in the lift, go down to the basement, grab everything you need for a couple of bucks and then head back up to your room.
If only the rest of the world was like that. Because this isn't even limited to the top end of hotels in Japan. Accommodation providers from all levels will often stock their hotels with vending machines selling cheap drinks and snacks. There's no culture here of taking advantage of the guests trapped in your confines with overpriced sales; instead, you serve them what they require: cheap beer and tasty snacks.
Hotel mini-bars are an outrageous rip-off, everyone understands that. It's a thing you just have to put up with when you travel, a facility you only use in an emergency. But not in Japan.
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