Yesterday, I finally made it into the tightly guarded JSW plant in northern Japan. Here, global nuclear energy ambitions become steely reality. I was allowed to glimpse the most advanced part of the workshop, where the world’s biggest ingots are crafted into components by the most intricate tools ever used to shape metal.

Over the roar of machinery, I heard a faint scuffling, and from behind a 600-tonne solid-steel turbine shaft emerged my nemesis: a man clutching a tea towel on a stick. For years he has tracked me through Japan’s industrial landscape, in overalls, lab coat, or rustic smock. I recently spotted him in full frogman’s clobber.

From tiny workshops to mile-long production lines, he skulks silently but critically in the background. The world should take note, though: the man with the tea towel on a stick is Japan’s edge, and always has been. The whole enterprise would break down without this man because, for all its astonishing technology, Japan Inc has a hawk-eye for old fashioned grime and a masterly sense of where best to dab a tea towel.

Companies boast about robotics and automation, but still have not devised a manufacturing process that does not involve a person wrapping a flimsy bit of cotton around a stick and taking the time to clean, dry or degrease an awkward spot.

Our eyes met across the biggest lathe on Earth and my stalker scuttled away with the tools of his trade: we both knew I had seen the factory’s darkest secret.

World’s end

I know, I know; childish. But to my puerile British ears, Japan’s linguistic tussle with the name of our planet is a gift that never stops giving. For such a little word, “Earth” presents the Japanese with two substantial elocution challenges: the initial open-mid- central vowel sound and the need to sibilate the final digraph. Bluntly, they can’t help pronouncing it “arse”.

Japanese Earth/arse substitutions provide a steady salary of mirth, but the climate change summit is a Goldman Sachs-sized bonus. With greenness in the ether, every marketing man in Japan is currently advising his clients to cram “earth” into their slogans to lure the eco-yen. The grandest campaign of the lot has been masterminded by Isetan, the Harrods of Japan. “Kiss the Earth”, shout the green Christmas posters. Which is fine, until anyone reads them aloud.

Green fingers

The climate debate may eventually come down to a graph that plots pleasure against environmental impact. One axis would chart “fun quotient”, while the other would give an emission/energy consumption rating. The next stage would be to plot every source of human pleasure to determine its legitimacy.

A lonely yoga session in a field, for example, would have minimal impact, but generate modest fun. A round-the-world Hummer race and tree-felling competition would score highly on both axes. Armed with the graph — call it the Wages of Joy — global leaders could argue over national pleasure quotas and the question of whose fun footprint is most justifiable: your village’s bonfire festival; my 52in television; his waterskiing holiday; or her taste for boeuf en daube?

I would guess the activity judged the most carbon- emissive and energy consumptive for the least human pleasure would belong to some Japanese profligacy. The Tokyo International Nail Expo, for example.

When climate activists request lifestyle changes to curb our wasteful ways, drawing 80,000 people from around the world to an air-conditioned hangar to discuss nail polish could be what they have in mind. But they would be wrong. One of the most crowded booths this year belonged to a Japanese company that has devised a new technique for making fingernails look like finest alabaster. “This is the happiest day of my life!” squealed one girl to her pal as they admired the effects on two giant plasma screens above the stall.

Wipe it out

For decades, Japan’s habit of funnelling public money into daft vote-grabbing projects in the regions upset only grouchy locals and grumbling foreigners. Both (quite small) groups wailed in disbelief as the cities overflowed with needless street furniture and the countryside was blotted with insane concrete follies. Everyone else kept mum. A new mood has rolled into town, though, and spotting extravagance with public funds has become a national sport. In its daily primetime feature on the subject, Fuji TV has so far this week revealed a £7,000 anti-bicycle bollard that doesn’t work and a £30 million asteroid museum that has only eight visitors a day and displays a single, commonly available chunk of meteorite.

When, I wonder, will they get around to villifying the Asakura Towel Art museum that cost the local government purse of Imabari millions and stands in exaltation of the tea towel in its many glorious forms (including stick-mounted)?

Leo Lewis Tokyo Notebook