At every major stop on the long line from Peshawar, in the northwest, to the turbulent port city of Karachi, lie reminders of why the country is a worry to its people, and to the wider world: natural disasters and entrenched insurgencies, abject poverty and feudal kleptocrats, and an economy near meltdown.

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As yen falls, goods from Japan are more affordable. / Associated Press

Attention, bargain-hunters around the world: Japanese goods — from cars to televisions — are going on sale.

Credit Japan’s drive to pump cash into its economy to stimulate growth. The extra money flooding its financial system is helping shrink the value of the yen. A U.S. dollar now buys about 100 yen. Last fall, it bought fewer than 80.

When the yen’s value falls, many Japanese goods become less expensive worldwide. Toyotas become cheaper in Germany, the United States and South Korea. So do Sony electronics. For tourists, Tokyo doesn’t cost so much to visit.

By contrast, goods made in Europe, Asia and the United States become pricier compared with Japanese products. And as sales of Japanese products grow, Japan’s economy benefits.

The rest of the world’s economies? Not so much — not right away, at least. Japan’s critics say it’s manipulating its currency to give Japanese companies an unfair edge over foreign rivals. Japan says it’s seeking to energize its economy, not lower the yen.

In the long run, economists say other nations gain, too. An economically stronger Japan means its consumers and businesses can afford to buy more goods from other countries, helping lift their economies, too.

Here’s how a cheaper yen will affect consumers, companies and investors worldwide:

Japanese cars and electronics

If you’re a customer of Honda, Toyota or Sony somewhere outside Japan, a falling yen is your best friend. It means Camrys, Accords and PlayStations will likely cost less. And once foreign sales are converted into yen, more revenue flows to Japanese manufacturers.

When Toyota sold a Camry in the United States for $30,000, those dollars were converted into roughly 2.4 million yen. Today, Toyota would get 3 million yen from such a sale — 25 percent more.

That’s in part why Toyota, the world’s top-selling automaker, more than doubled its most recent quarterly profit from a year earlier. And why Sony is back in the black after four straight years of losses and predicts another profit for its current fiscal year.

Japan makes up about 35 percent of the U.S. auto market. It exported 1.8 million cars to North America in the fiscal year that ended in March, up nearly 6 percent from the previous year. Toyota’s Camry is the top-selling car in the United States.

Toyota, Honda and Nissan receive roughly $2,000 more for each vehicle sold when the yen depreciates from 78 to 100 yen per dollar, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley. For automakers that sell a larger proportion of their vehicles outside Japan, like Mazda, the advantage is greater: For Mazda, it’s about $4,000 per vehicle.

Nissan’s announcement this month that it’s cutting prices of seven models was seen as the latest blow in a price war accelerated by the weaker yen. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas expects General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to lose some U.S. share to Japanese rivals within a few years.

That said, Japanese automakers now have to pay more for parts made by suppliers outside Japan. And Fitch Ratings predicts the weaker yen will be only modestly positive for Japanese electronics makers. That’s true even for a company like Panasonic, which gets nearly half its revenue overseas.

In part, that’s because, as with cars, many Japanese goods are produced in factories abroad. When the yen drops, it costs more for Japanese manufacturers to import those goods. Panasonic, for example, runs factories in China. A lower yen raises the cost of bringing its electronics products back to Japan to be sold.

Tourism

Always dreamt of visiting Japan? It’s becoming more affordable.

Thanks to the yen’s fall beginning in late 2012, the number of visitors to Japan rose 18 percent in the first three months of 2013 to 2.3 million. Japan Tourism Agency officials say the dollar’s rise against the yen is a key reason.

If tourism strengthens further, it would help revitalize that industry after Japan’s 2011 nuclear crisis spooked many would-be visitors. The Japanese government has set an ambitious goal of attracting 25 million visitors by 2020.

Mike Roberts, owner of Samurai Tours in Denver, which organizes tours to Japan, is booking more visits.

“The number of tourists this cherry blossom season in March and April was the highest ever,” Roberts says.

And it could further increase over the coming months.

“Japan is not the kind of place that somebody decides to go to on the spur of the moment,” Roberts says. “It (the low yen) might make more difference later this year or even next year.”

Just as a weaker yen makes it cheaper for foreigners to vacation in Japan, it has the reverse effect, too: Japanese tourists must pay more to travel abroad.

That trend is inducing groans from tour operators and other businesses in Seoul that are already struggling from a decline in Japanese tourists. The drop in visits has followed North Korea’s war threats and tensions from a Japan-South Korea territorial dispute.

More than 3 million Japanese, mainly tourists, visited the United States last year, according to the Commerce Department’s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries. They were the largest contingent of tourists from any overseas country. And now they’ll pay more to visit.

The number of Japanese tourists to South Korea reached a record 3.5 million last year. But in April, the number sank more than 30 percent from the same month a year earlier.

Global trade

The weaker yen could hurt the sales of European companies already struggling from the region’s recession.

In Europe’s shrinking auto market, a cheaper yen could magnify price competition among manufacturers of mass-market cars, says Stefan Bratzel, an analyst at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. It could allow Japanese carmakers to keep prices down to retain or attract customers.

That would intensify pressure on struggling competitors like General Motors’ money-losing Opel brand and France’s Peugeot Citroen PSA.

“It heats up the price war even more,” Bratzel says.

The cheap yen could also hurt Germany’s exporters, a key pillar for the euro alliance’s ailing economy. Germany and Japan each depend on exports of cars, transportation equipment and industrial machinery. And they compete in China, the United States and Europe.

“At the margin, German exporters will find it increasingly difficult to gain further market share in China, and the Japanese are probably going to take market share from them,” said economist Christian Schulz at Berenberg Bank in London.

South Korean companies are particularly vulnerable to a weaker yen. They compete directly with Japanese auto and electronics companies in the United States and other key markets.

But analysts say they doubt Japanese companies will aggressively cut prices to try to seize market share from South Korean rivals like Samsung, LG and Hyundai. They think Japanese companies will use the weaker yen to reverse their companies’ losses. But slashing prices could damage their brands’ reputations.

Park Hyun, an analyst at Tong Yang Securities in Seoul, foresees no effect on the market share of Samsung or LG.

“TV makers are already competing by lowering TV prices, and Panasonic is making a loss,” Park said. “It’s impossible to further lower prices.”

The weaker yen could widen China’s trade deficit with Japan. That’s because Chinese goods will become costlier in Japan. Japanese goods will become cheaper in China. Rising Japanese exports would serve its automakers and other companies that do business with China.

A prolonged yen decline might stiffen China’s resistance to letting its tightly controlled currency rise in value, as the U.S. and others have been pressing it to do.

Investors in Japan

For two decades starting in the early 1990s , Japan’s stock market fizzled alongside its economy. In 1989, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock index peaked at 38,915. A decade later, it was down to 18,500. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, it sank to 7,054 in 2009.

Invest in Asia, advisers would typically tell you — but whatever you do, avoid Japan.

Bad advice this year. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index has returned 45 percent so far this year, to roughly 15,000. No other major stock index is even close. The U.S. Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, for instance, has delivered a terrific first four months. It’s up 16 percent.

Think there’s plenty more room for the Nikkei to run? Non-Japanese investors can acquire a stake by investing in mutual or exchange-traded funds that track Japanese stocks. Example: The iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund (Ticker: EWJ). Or the Japan mutual funds run by firms like T. Rowe Price and Fidelity.

Buyer beware: Investments advisers caution that Japanese stocks remain volatile and risky.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo, Youkyung Lee in Seoul, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit, Scott Mayerowitz and Joseph Pisani in New York and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 

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In this April 11, 2013 photo, Biju Nair, principal clown at Rambo Circus, looks at a mirror before a performance on the outskirts of Mumbai, India. Rafiq Maqbool / AP Photo

In the early morning heat and dust, daily practice at the Rambo Circus is in full swing. A trapeze creaks as two performers perfect their throws. A Colombian daredevil shouts to his colleagues scrambling atop a giant set of spinning wheels called the Ring of Death.

Looking on with worry is circus manager John Matthew. For 38 years, he has been in the business of entertaining people throughout southern India. But there’s little to smile about these days. The big top set up in a desolate field outside Mumbai seats 3,000 people. Recently, there have been less than 100 tickets sold.

While circuses in other countries struggle to compete with an ever-increasing array of entertainment options, India’s have faced a cataclysm.

In the 1990s, 300 circuses operated throughout the country. That number has dwindled to about 30, says Matthew. And many of those are being hammered by the rising rents for field space, shrinking revenues and — crucially — two Supreme Court rulings that took away the industry’s main attractions.

“After 10 or 15 more years, there may not be any circus at all in India,” Matthew says, sitting at a folding table outside the canvas tent he uses as both office and living quarters.

Circuses once held legendary status in India as entertainment for everyone from princes to pariahs. The biggest names pitched their tents in town centers, drawing huge crowds night after night. The modern circus here is a 130-year-old tradition that according to local lore began when a southern rajah’s horse trainer was taunted by the leader of a visiting Italian show, who said India couldn’t build its own circus. The trainer, Vishnupant Chartre, founded The Great Indian Circus within months, spawning a national love affair with clowns, wild animal acts and death-defying feats.

In the 1990s, India’s Supreme Court banned the use of wild animals in circuses, citing widespread neglect of lions, bears, monkeys and panthers. Then, two years ago, it banned child performers.

“There are instances of sexual abuse on a daily basis, physical abuse as well as emotional abuse. The children are deprived of basic needs of food and water,” the activist group Bachpan Bachao Andolan said in the lawsuit charging exploitation of young children that led to the ban.

Matthew, however, disagrees with both court bans. He remembers fondly his early days in the circus when there was a menagerie of trained tigers, elephants and other exotic animals that were the main draw for audiences.

“We loved our animals, and our business depended on them. So we took good care of them,” he insists. Now, the circus only has four elephants, and Matthew says the Ministry of Environment is considering taking them away too.

As for child labor, he says, circuses used to give a skill and livelihood to poor children unable to go school.

Biju Nair was once one of those children. At age 10, he literally ran away and joined the circus.

Fleeing an abusive home, he stowed away on a train to Mumbai — then called Bombay — and wandered the streets. Hungry and desperate, he wandered into a circus and was given a plateful of food and a job as a ticket taker. In his teens, he used to sneak into the tent to watch the performance, particularly fascinated by the clown acts. Eventually, he persuaded the clowns to teach him their trade.

Now 42, Nair is the principal clown at Rambo Circus, a job he takes pride in. He says he scours YouTube for videos of international clowning acts to give him new ideas with help from other performers who know how to read and write, since he never learned.

“It’s a hard life in many ways, yes, but it gave me a chance,” he says. “And there is a good feeling in making people laugh.”

Still, he is glad his two children, who live with his late wife’s parents in Kerala, are getting an education in school, instead the circus.

Nair, too, doesn’t see much of a future for circuses in India now that child apprenticeships are banned. Skills like acrobatics and tightrope walking have to be taught young, he says, but there are no students anymore.

“You don’t just wake up at 20 and learn to do these things,” he says.

With a shortage of homegrown performers, Indian circuses have turned to foreign acts. That’s how the three Colombian performers and their Ring of Death come to the Rambo Circus

In the midday lull between practice and the afternoon’s performance, 26-year-old Colombian Jhean Carlos lounges in the plywood cubicle the travelling crew builds for him each time they set up camp. The generator-powered air conditioner signifies his status as the star of the show.

The Colombians mostly keep to themselves, because they speak only Spanish. When the staff really needs to communicate with them, they use a computer translation program.

Carlos says he’s a fourth-generation circus performer, and in his home country, such performers have benefits and insurance against injury and illness. That impresses Nair, who makes just 8,000 rupees ($150) per month with no benefits other than housing in a shared canvas tent. But Nair and most Indian performers say Rambo is one of the better circuses in India.

Three months ago, the circus added an Ethiopian acrobatic troupe.

Girma Yidnekachew, who learned tumbling and contortion at a charity school for Ethiopian street children, says his country has an oversupply of performers and a shortage of circuses. He answered an Internet ad and came to India with some acrobat friends. Here he makes $600 per month

“It’s not the money,” says Yidnekachew, 23. “I like being inside the ring. It makes people happy.”

In addition to the expense of importing acts, Matthew has to contend with rising rent for the land to set up his big top and camp.

Indian academic Nisha Poyyarath Rayaroth, who studied circus culture for her doctorate at the University of Delhi, says circuses she visited all complained about access to land. The central government once instructed cities to accommodate travelling entertainers, but that support ended in the 1990s.

“Nowadays in many major cities, for example, New Delhi, circuses have to set up shop in grounds in the outliers of the city, without sufficient facilities,” Rayaroth says. Those locations also limit audiences.

At Rambo Circus’ temporary home, a 1 p.m. performance is cancelled because of poor ticket sales, but the 4 p.m. show has an audience of about 250, mostly parents with young children.

The show leads with the Ring of Death, with Carlos leaping in and out of the spinning rings. The Ethiopians come out dancing to an African beat, tumbling and contorting as the audience claps along in rhythm.

Biju the clown is a crowd-pleaser with his repertoire of pratfalls and fart jokes and a roundup inviting all the audience’s children to jump rope with him. The show winds up with the trapeze act, and the audience gasps and applauds.

As the crowd files out, Matthew allows himself a small smile.

For now, at least, his circus is defying death.

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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A Chinese tourist (foreground) grabs a beer and celebrates with German friends at Oktoberfest in Munich September 28, 2012. Michaela Rehle / Reuters

While tour operators and department stores from New York to Paris court Chinese visitors to boost their coffers, one of the country’s top leaders has warned that ill-behaved tourists are damaging the national image.

Wang Yang, one of China’s four deputy prime ministers, said that while other countries had welcomed Chinese tourism, the quality of some travellers was not high.

He said: “They speak loudly in public, carve characters on tourist attractions, cross the road when the traffic lights are still red, spit anywhere and [carry out] some other uncivilised behaviour. It damages the image of the Chinese people and has a very bad impact.”

Wang told a government meeting that officials should guide tourists “to consciously obey social and public order and social morality, respect the local religions and customs, pay attention to their words and behaviour in the public, especially in the international environment, protect tourism resources and protect the environment”, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported. Wang said tourists should be ambassadors for China’s image.

Wang’s complaint about graffiti may have been inspired by a domestic incident: there was anger recently when a vandal carved “Liang Qiqi was here” into a relic at Beijing’s Forbidden City.

Chinese people made 70m overseas trips in 2011, according to the World Tourism Organisation, which predicted the annual total would rise to 100m by the end of the decade. That figure included trips to Hong Kong and Macau, run under the “one country, two systems” framework.

Though on average they spend less than their western counterparts, their sheer number means that China has become the highest-spending nation for outbound tourism. Its tourists spent $102bn (£67bn) overseas last year, compared with the $84bn that German and US tourists spent, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation.

Chinese tourists have raised concerns about the behaviour of their hosts, too – including a lack of language skills and poor planning in South Korea to bullying guides in Hong Kong, the lack of hot water in Italian hotel rooms and the UK’s “unfriendly” visa system. Britain promised this week that it would try to simplify visa applications.

According to Visit Britain, the UK has seen a 39% rise in visits from China over the past five years. It welcomed 150,000 Chinese visitors last year, who between them spent £240m.

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The 838-meter-tall (2,749 feet) tower more commonly known as “Sky City” will be about 10 meters taller than the world’s highest skyscraper at present, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Moreover, it will be stationed in the southern, idyllic provincial capital of Changsha of about 7 million people—tiny compared to cities like Beijing or Shanghai.

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A China Eastern Airlines Airbus A340-642. Noel Jones / Flickr

China’s skies don’t have enough space.

The country’s air force controls airspace and allots only 20 percent to civil aviation. With China’s three biggest airlines planning to add at least 273 planes in the next three years, traffic congestion that already delays 25 percent of flights is set to worsen.

“At present, the limited airspace resource has restricted the development of civil aviation,” said Li Jiaxiang, the head of Civil Aviation Administration of China. “We will strive to further open up the airspace,” he said in Beijing yesterday.

Air China Ltd., China Eastern Airlines Corp. and China Southern Airlines Co. have expanded their fleet as economic growth spurs air travel demand in the world’s most populous nation. The country is expected to have 4,200 commercial aircraft in 2020, compared with the current fleet size of 2,001 with 46 airlines, CAAC’s Li said.

China’s civil aviation uses about a fifth of available routes of the nation’s total airspace, Shi Boli, who heads the department of Air Transportation Regulation at CAAC, said in an interview. Military controls about 52 percent of airspace in eastern China, home to the country’s biggest cities of Beijing and Shanghai, according to a 2011 June report by the official China News Service.

“We are working hard and the military is also trying to improve the management of airspace,” Shi said. “But, it could take some time to achieve some improvement.”

U.S. airspace

In the U.S., military restrictions don’t have much impact on civilian aviation because its airways tend to be located in desert regions or over oceans, far away from the busy airport hubs in cities such as New York, said Kevin Hiatt, president of Alexandria, Virginia-based Flight Safety Foundation. The military has also allowed its airspace to be used by civilian flights on some occasions such as busy holiday periods, he said.

Airspace over Europe is managed as a single unit and segregated on a “dynamic basis according to the needs of users,” air traffic supervisory agency Eurocontrol said. In general, areas will only be reserved for military use at certain times and at certain altitudes, it said in an e-mail.

The on-time performance rate of China’s airlines was about 74.5 percent last year, CAAC’s Shi said. In the U.S., 82 percent of the flights arrived on time in 2012, according to Bureau of Transportation statistics.

‘New leadership’

“People are hoping that the country’s new leadership can have a breakthrough in getting more airspace released to accommodate the rapid growth,” said Kelvin Lau, a Hong Kong- based analyst at Daiwa Securities Group Inc. “Otherwise, delays will persist and hurt the airlines’ long term growth prospects.”

China’s air force, which has controlled the airspace since the People’s Republic was established in 1949, has started gradually relaxing some of the curbs. It has begun to open low- altitude airspace and released more information about the availability of temporary routes, the Official Xinhua News Agency reported in August.

Still, the pace isn’t quick enough to catch up with the airlines’ growth as the number of annual passengers has more than doubled in the past seven years, said David Wei, an aerospace analyst with Shanghai Securities Co.

“The military has a bigger say in China’s airspace usage for historical reasons,” Wei said. “It has no incentive to concede the right unless the government wants it to.”

Fly longer

Airspace restrictions also force airlines to fly longer distances on some routes, said Liu Jieyin, executive vice president at closely-held Okay Airways Co., which operates flights between cities including Tianjin, Hangzhou and Sanya.

“This is still better than before when we had to wait on ground for hours for the completion of military drills,” Liu said. “We couldn’t take proactive measures as we wouldn’t know drills until the last minute and couldn’t tell passengers the real reason either.”

Air China, Asia’s biggest carrier by market value, will receive 113 aircraft in the next three years, according to a company statement. China Eastern will add 93 planes in two years while China Southern will have 67 additions this year, the carriers have said.

‘Tomorrow’s growth will further pressure the system,’’ said Will Horton, a Hong Kong-based analyst at CAPA Centre for Aviation, which advises airlines. “While reforms are gradually being made, the military seems impervious to the government’s wish for more airspace.”

Airport infrastructure

While carriers await the easing of airspace rules, the nation is expanding its airport infrastructure. Beijing has won approval for its new facility with an investment of more than 70 billion yuan ($11 billion), Beijing News reported in January. The country targets to have 260 airports by 2020 from 183 at present.

“The emergence of a rapidly growing middle-class with aspirations to travel, along with record levels of urbanization and continued growth in business, has created a pressing need for better aviation infrastructure across China,” said Will Lau, an aviation consultant with EC Harris (Hong Kong) Ltd. Still, “the physical assets on the ground will not effectively respond to the passenger demand unless additional capacity is also made available in the skies above.”

With assistance from Alan Levin in Washington. Editors: Vipin V. Nair, Suresh Seshadri. To contact the reporter on this story: Jasmine Wang in Hong Kong at jwang513@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vipin V. Nair at vnair12@bloomberg.net. 

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A course at Ryugin restaurant in Tokyo. Andrew Kim / Flickr

In 2007, Michelin published its first-ever restaurant guide to Tokyo and awarded the city more stars than even Paris. Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin’s editorial director at the time, was emphatic: Tokyo, he said, was “by far the world’s capital of gastronomy,” a comment that seemed as much an indictment of Paris, and of France, as it was a nod to Tokyo.

Back then, it was no secret that the French had lost their edge in the kitchen, Bloomberg Pursuits will report in its Summer 2013 issue. “The fear is that the muse has migrated,” The New Yorker magazine’s Adam Gopnik wrote of the perceived crisis in French cuisine as early as 1997.

In 2009, I published a book on the topic called Au Revoir to All That, which chronicled the many ways in which France’s food culture had deteriorated over the preceding two decades — from the disappearance of traditional bistros and brasseries to the country’s seemingly insatiable appetite for Le Big Mac. (By 2008, France had become the second-most-profitable market for McDonald’s Corp., after the U.S., according to the company.)

With its 2013 guide, Michelin has again affirmed that the “muse” has relocated to Tokyo: The French food bible awarded three stars, its highest rating, to 14 restaurants (compared with only 10 in Paris) and dished out a total of 323 stars — more than to any other city in the Michelin firmament — to 281 establishments overall.

Capital of gastronomy

“Japanese gourmet cooking is even more creative, inspired and inventive than in the past,” declared Michael Ellis, Naret’s successor.

I traveled to Tokyo to see for myself if it deserved all those stars — if it really was “the world’s capital of gastronomy.” Many thousands of calories later, I have come to understand why Michelin’s famously anonymous inspectors might have felt such an affinity for the city.

It turns out that the same qualities that put French cuisine on top — impeccable ingredients, dedication to craft, an unwavering quest for perfection — are also the cornerstones of Japan’s food culture.

For a disillusioned Francophile, Tokyo is an exhilarating discovery. It’s not the new Paris; it’s Paris the way it used to be. And the Gallic connection runs deeper than you might imagine.

Distinctive style

It’s the end of my first full day in Tokyo, and all that neon has left me in a vaguely hallucinatory state — a feeling amplified by the otherworldly sushi I am eating at Sushi-Sho, a minuscule restaurant of just 10 seats arranged around a brightly lit bar.

Chef Keiji Nakazawa is one of Japan’s foremost sushi masters, having helped revive a distinctive style of sushi called edomae, in which the fish is aged — sometimes for as long as two weeks — before being served. “Completely fresh fish doesn’t have any taste,” he explains.

Nakazawa, an energetic 50-year-old dressed in crisp chef whites, his undershirt visible just below the neck, maintains a spirited dialogue with diners as he nimbly fashions each piece of sushi — gently shaping the warm rice, swiftly applying a dab of freshly ground wasabi, laying the fish on top and lightly coating it with soy sauce.

Upon placing each piece in front of me, he tells me where that particular fish came from (the tuna was caught near Nagasaki; the eel, off Osaka) and how it was caught (line or net). Nakazawa says he needs this information in order to properly age and serve the fish.

Obsessive attention

To illustrate the point, he mentions another fish he’s using: golden eye snapper. He prefers to serve it with the skin on, but to do that, he says, he has to know the depth at which the snapper was caught; below 200 meters (655 feet), the water pressure renders the skin too tough. What I don’t yet realize, but am about to discover, is that this obsessive attention to detail is nothing out of the ordinary in Tokyo. It’s typical — and not just of the high-end restaurants.

One morning, I have dessert for breakfast at Patisserie Hidemi Sugino, which is rightly considered Tokyo’s finest pastry shop and whose namesake chef is so protective of his ineffably delicate creations that he will sell only to those who agree to consume them within 90 minutes of purchase. Some pastries he won’t even let out the door; they must be eaten in the adjacent tearoom.

Later that day, I go to Toritama, a basement-level yakitori joint in Tokyo’s Kagurazaka district. Yakitori is skewered grilled chicken, and there’s a lot of it in Tokyo. But in contrast to most yakitori restaurants, Toritama performs its own butchering and makes full use of the bird.

First-rate ingredients

In fact, it serves 37 parts, including six different cuts from the thigh alone. (The restaurant helpfully provides an anatomy chart so that diners can pick out the parts they want.) It cooks the chicken over bincho charcoal, considered the gold standard, and the results are sensational.

First-rate charcoal, first-rate ingredients — the quality of the fish, fruits, poultry, meats and vegetables in Tokyo is extraordinary; $100 melons and $180 mangoes are not unheard-of. What’s more, in contrast to the sometimes absentee chefs of Paris — presiding over restaurants that span the world — Tokyo’s top chefs are generally tethered to their kitchens. Not only that: You get to watch them work. Counter seating is the norm — and not only for sushi.

No meal better captures the essence of Tokyo dining than the lunch I have at a tempura restaurant called Raku-tei. It has two Michelin stars, but you’d never guess that from its appearance.

Understated appearance

It’s located on the ground floor of a beige, five-story eyesore of an apartment building on a quiet side street in central Tokyo. When I walk in, Shuji Ishikura, its 77-year-old chef, is on his hands and knees, pushing a case of wine under the small wooden bench that passes for the waiting area.

For two hours, I quietly watch this elderly master, aided only by his sister and a single apprentice, ply his craft — gently depositing each vegetable and piece of fish in the batter, then the cooking oil (which he changes after every service) and finally onto hand-cut tempura paper.

Ishikura has raised fried food to the level of haute cuisine. But my lunch at Raku-tei begins with raw fish: a sashimi appetizer consisting of flounder and toro (tuna belly). When I compliment Ishikura on the astonishing quality of the fish, he volunteers that he’s about to replace the flounder with sea bream. That’s because flounder mating season has commenced and many of the nutrients in the fish will now be devoted to reproduction, which means the flesh won’t be as flavorful, he says.

Cross-pollination

The quality of Tokyo’s ingredients and the singular dedication of its chefs rival Paris of old. But Tokyo also resembles the City of Light in another way: It’s a source of fabulous French food, the result of a half-century of culinary cross-pollination between France and Japan.

This exchange began in the 1960s, when leading French chefs such as Raymond Oliver, Paul Bocuse and Jean and Pierre Troisgros regularly traveled to Japan and came away with ideas about cooking, presentation and service that helped inspire France’s nouvelle cuisine revolution. Other French chefs went to Japan and stayed.

Thanks to this beneficent invasion, the Japanese developed a passion for French food, which ultimately led many young chefs to pursue careers in it. By the 1990s, the finest restaurants in Paris were teeming with Japanese trainees, and there are now several Japanese chefs cooking Michelin-starred French fare in France.

Second home

Others who trained in France returned to Japan and opened French restaurants, bakeries and wine bars there. Most of these are in Tokyo, which has become a kind of second home for French cuisine.

That point was dramatically underscored when Michelin, in its inaugural Tokyo guide, awarded three stars to a restaurant called Quintessence, whose chef, Shuzo Kishida, now 33, thus became the first Japanese-born French chef to receive Michelin’s highest rating.

Although my meal at Quintessence is good, it isn’t the best French food I have in Tokyo. That distinction belongs to a restaurant called L’Effervescence. It currently has one Michelin star; it ought to have two, and possibly three. Shinobu Namae, the 40-year-old chef, trained under the brilliant French chef Michel Bras and also did a stint with the even more esteemed Heston Blumenthal at three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, England.

Duck breast

Namae’s food shows Bras’s influence (a beautifully composed salad containing 37 different vegetables) but also has some playful, Blumenthal-like touches (a demitasse of tea in which one side is cold and the other hot, with nothing separating the two sides).

The dish that floors me, though, is duck breast served with blood orange, girolle mushrooms and daikon radish. The duck is flawlessly cooked and seasoned, and its interplay with the citrus, mushrooms and radish is masterful. It’s a dish that would stand out even at a top-tier restaurant in France.

Which raises a delicate question: Having already eclipsed Paris in Michelin stars, could Tokyo chefs one day eclipse the French at their own cuisine?

I put the question to pastry chef Sugino, who trained in France and is one of only four Japanese members of the prestigious Relais Desserts, an association of the world’s top pastry makers who meet regularly to exchange ideas.

’Losing the basics’

Choosing his words carefully, he notes that pastry shops in France are having difficulty finding young people willing to put in the time and effort required to learn the craft. He also says that even top French patisseries are now taking shortcuts — by using stabilizers in their desserts, for instance.

“They are losing the basics,” Sugino says. “It is possible that, 10 or 20 years from now, the French will have lost the art of pastry but that it will live on in Tokyo, in Japan.”

For this disillusioned Francophile, it’s a strange but gratifying thought.

After a week of gorging myself on Tokyo, I am persuaded: It is the most dynamic food city in the world. And the only outstanding question is: How soon can I return?

10 Most Wanted

No culinary tour of contemporary Tokyo is complete without a trip to these dining destinations.

Ginza Kojyu A three-Michelin-starred restaurant specializing in kaiseki, the most refined form of Japanese cuisine. Chef Toru Okuda’s presentations are as spectacular as the food. 81-3-6215-9544; kojyu.jp

Ishikawa Hideki Ishikawa, 48, adheres to the kaiseki protocol (appetizers, sashimi, soup, grilled fish, meat, rice, pickles and tea) but eschews the ornate plating typical of the genre. He calls it “Ishikawa style”; whatever you call it, the food at this three-star spot is sensational. 81-3-5225-0173; kagurazaka- ishikawa.co.jp

Kaduya Ramen is more than a food; it’s a Japanese obsession. This small, brightly lit restaurant is renowned for its homemade noodles and subtle, deeply flavored broth. 81-3-3716-2071

L’Effervescence Shinobu Namae’s one-Michelin-starred dishes illustrate the Japanese mastery of French cuisine. The setting, cater-cornered to a Shinto temple, is elegant and convivial. 81-3-5766-9500; leffervescence.jp

Patisserie Hidemi Sugino It’s perhaps the finest pastry shop in Tokyo — better, even, than celebrated French imports such as Pierre Herme. 81-3-3538- 6780

Raku-tei Shuji Ishikura, 77, produces ethereally light tempura dishes at his tiny, serene two-starred eatery. 81-3-3585-3743

Ryugin At this three-starred restaurant, Seiji Yamomoto updates the traditional kaiseki format with avant-garde flourishes — a frozen candy apple filled with apple powder, for instance. 81-3- 3423-8006; nihonryori-ryugin.com

Shima Chef Nabu Oshima is a wizard with hand-rubbed Wagyu; he also cures his own salmon at this small, clubby steakhouse. 81-3- 3271-7889

Sushi-Sho Keiji Nakazawa is among Japan’s most innovative sushi masters, aging the fish for up to two weeks. Forget what you think you know about sushi. 81-3-3351-6387

Toritama Unlike most yakitori joints, Toritama butchers its own chickens, uses every last part of the bird and grills them over top- quality bincho charcoal. 81-3-6457-5131; toritama.net

Michael Steinberger is author of Au Revoir to All That. The opinions expressed are his own.

Editors: Joel Weber, Laura Colby. To contact the writer responsible for this story: Michael Steinberger at mhsteinberger@gmail.com. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ted Moncreiff at tmoncreiff@bloomberg.net. To write a letter to the editor, send an e-mail to bloombergmag@bloomberg.net. 

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The jet-leasing company, which owns 159 aircraft, plans to invest $850 million this year, Chief Executive Officer Ron Wainshal said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.

Aircastle, based at Stamford, Connecticut, joins Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., Asia’s largest aviation leasing company, and Orix Corp. in expanding business as economic growth in Asia boosts travel demand. Asia-Pacific air travel will expand 6.4 percent a year and the region will drive almost half of the world’s air traffic growth in the next two decades, Boeing Co. has forecast.

“Everyone is looking at Asia as the main growth center,” said Paul Sheridan, chief Asia consultant at Ascend Worldwide Ltd. “While it is competitive, there is still going to be a pretty decent amount of supply. Airlines are all willing to consider selling to leasing companies and leasing back.”

Aircastle’s revenue may increase to $703.8 million this year, according to the average of nine analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Profit will probably almost triple to $93.6 million, the average of six analysts’ estimates showed.

The leasing company, which employs 85 people worldwide, increased the number of staff at its Singapore office to eight this year from two, Wainshal said. The company will remain flexible on doubling assets, he said.

Value Investor

“It’s not a number set in stone,” Wainshal said referring to doubling assets. “If the market gets too high we will sell more planes.”

Aircastle rose 0.8 percent to $15.55 in New York trading yesterday. The shares have gained 24 percent this year, compared with a 16 percent increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

The company, rated BB+ by Standard & Poor’s, may take advantage of increased demand for speculative-grade corporate bonds that pushed rates on the securities to a record low last week. A bond sale could be for new capital or refinancing, Wainshal said.

Record Low Yields

The yield to maturity on high-yield corporate bonds worldwide fell below 6 percent last week, compared with a record high of 23.2 percent in December 2008, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global High Yield index.

Aircastle, whose biggest shareholder is the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, has four bonds outstanding and is paying a 9.75 percent coupon on $450 million of fixed-income securities issued in 2010 that mature in August 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“At the moment the bond market is incredibly attractive,” Wainshal said. “I expect we could do something in the bond market this year for growth or refinancing. The refinancing is driven by what you have to pay to get out of existing financing.”

Aircastle is interested in buying used planes or new wide- body planes, such as Boeing 777s, he said. The company isn’t interested in ordering directly from Boeing and Airbus SAS at the moment, Wainshal said.

“It has the strongest possibility of still being in production at the end of the decade,” he said about the Boeing 777. “There is nowhere in the world that has more demand for wide-body aircraft than Asia.”

Editors: Subramaniam Sharma and Vipin V. Nair.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Cooper in Tokyo at ccooper1@bloomberg.net; Kiyotaka Matsuda in Tokyo at kmatsuda@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vipin V. Nair at vnair12@bloomberg.net.

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“We have a strong service in Japan that’s driving the rest of the business. We are building brands in Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and India. We are well along the way – it’s already a $100 million business – we didn’t enter this JV for a two-year project. Everything is always slower than what Tony (Fernandes) and I want but we have a great asset base now.”

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Four All Nippon Airways' (ANA) Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner planes (top) are seen behind another ANA plane at Haneda airport in Tokyo January 29, 2013. Toru Hanai / Reuters

Airbus SAS is in discussions with Japan’s two biggest carriers about an order for its A350-1000, a long-range plane aimed at eroding Boeing Co.’s dominance in wide-body aircraft, three people familiar with the talks said.

Negotiations with ANA Holdings Inc. and Japan Airlines Co. are advanced, and JAL may place an order by September to replace some of its older Boeing 777s, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because talks are continuing. JAL, which has never bought Airbus aircraft, may purchase as many as 20 of the biggest A350 variant, one of the people said.

An order for Airbus’s newest model from Japan would mark a victory for the European planemaker in a market where Boeing has enjoyed near total hegemony for decades. Those ties were underpinned on the 787 Dreamliner, with more than a third of the structure built by Japanese suppliers. Boeing made JAL and ANA the first operators, only to see the premiere sour amid a months-long grounding of the fleet after batteries caught fire.

“An A350 order by JAL would be a disaster for Boeing,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based aerospace forecaster. “The Boeing- Japanese relationship is the longest and most important global relationship in aerospace history. If they really do choose an Airbus plane that would be a vote of no-confidence in Boeing.”

Three Variants

JAL looks at all types of aircraft, spokesman Kazunori Kidosaki said when asked about the talks. ANA hasn’t started discussing what plane it may buy after the current 777, spokeswoman Megumi Tezuka said. Stefan Schaffrath, a spokesman for Airbus in Toulouse, France, said the company doesn’t comment on discussions with existing or potential customers.

The first variant, the A350-900, will seat 314 and is set to enter service by late 2014, with the debut flight planned for mid-2013. A smaller variant, the A350-800 will follow in 2016, with the largest, the A350-1000, slated for late 2017.

Airbus says the A350-1000, which costs $332.1 million at list price, will offer 25 percent better operating economics than Boeing’s best-selling 777-300ER.

To counter the potential threat from Airbus, Boeing has begun marketing a successor to its 777, the 777X. Boeing first disclosed potential plans to offer a 777 replacement at the Paris Air Show in 2009. Four years later, Boeing has begun marketing the 777X though hasn’t yet committed to building the plane. Chief Executive Officer James McNerney has said Boeing expects to have the plane in service around the end of the decade.

Keep Waiting

ANA and JAL “are both 777 customers, but how long can you be expected to wait for the 777X” said Robert Mann, an aerospace consultant based in Port Washington, New York.

As of Dec. 31, JAL had 46 Boeing 777s in its fleet, while ANA had 52 777s as of the end of April, according to the companies’ websites.

While Airbus is on par with its rival globally, the European company has a market share of less than 5 percent in Japan, the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China, and home to Haneda Airport, among the busiest globally.

Boeing’s stumbles on its 787 Dreamliner, which debuted three years behind schedule and was grounded for more than three months, may help Airbus win the endorsement of local subcontractors that have typically shunned the European company as the risky upstart.

Japanese companies designed and made 35 percent of the structure of the 787, with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. supplying the wings and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. building part of the front fuselage section and center wing boxes.

The record level of work for Japanese suppliers coincided with Japan’s airlines being among the Dreamliner’s top clients. ANA placed the first order for the model in 2004, for 50 planes, and JAL ordered 35.

Boeing hasn’t said yet whether it will ask Japanese companies to build the wing for the 777X or take that work back in house.

With assistance from Thomas Black in Dallas and Chris Cooper in Tokyo. Editors: Benedikt Kammel and Christopher Jasper.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Rothman in Toulouse at aerothman@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net.

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