Songfacts®:

• Nicky Wire's lyrics for this song are about the band being completely seduced by Tokyo. He told The Quietus: "I think we all were when we first went there and we did the 'Motorcycle Emptiness' video, it's the first place we ever got a gold disc. I'll never forget, we turned up at the airport at six in the morning and there were hundreds of people, we all looked behind us because we thought The Black Crowes were there or something. We realised they were all waiting for us, and thought, 'Fu--ing hell!' It was such an indelible scar. It's the most alien culture I've ever been to, in a good way, and I've loved the feeling of safety. Whenever we go back there's a special bond."
• Vocalist James Dean Bradfield described this track to NME as having a "fragility, but it's not mournful or dampened."
• Here are three more songs that were inspired by the Japanese city:
  
  "Tokyo Melody" by Helmut Zacharias.
  
  "Elephant Song" by Enemy.
  
  "Paris, Tokyo" by Lupe Fiasco.
  
  Pedant's corner: Actually, Tokyo isn't officially a city. In 1943 Tokyo Metropolis was formed from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Since then, Tokyo has been commonly referred to as a "metropolitan prefecture."