Japan

The Ritz Carlton shines amidst the prevaling sleaze of raunchy, vulgar Roppongi, in the so-called Midtown complex off on one side of the district, and its top floor lobby is small, elegant and quiet, if somewhat predictable in design. (It looks very much like the Conrad Tokyo, the Mandarin Tokyo, the Shangri la Tokyo, the Four Seasons Marunouchi and other chain hotels: very nice but heavy on the deja vu.) But the food throughout the Ritz is, for Tokyo, a huge disappointment and generates plans to find better, more reasonably priced places nearby, which can get confusing and time consuming if you are not there for a long enough period to explore. I also thought the service was attentive but also spastic, I think from language issues.