Imperial Hotel Tokyo: Meet and greet the elite

Imperial Hotel Tokyo is famous for its awe-inspiring customer service and venerated as the Japanese imperial family's favorite wedding spot. 

The hotel is always packed with ladies who lunch -- or rather the Japanese equivalent -- ladies who afternoon tea. They may be canter-levered into kimonos, but they can pack away unfeasibly-large amounts of cake.

Their husbands meanwhile are running the country upstairs, sipping whiskey over dinner inside the Imperial Hotel Tokyo's old-school banqueting venues.

The rooms are decent but not extravagant, and location is great. And Frank Lloyd Wright's original bar still exists inside. But the primary appeal of Imperial Hotel Tokyo, however, remains the ability to drop your stay there into polite conversation.