The first Michelin Guide to Tokyo's best restaurants has sold extremely well since going on sale Nov. 22, which isn't surprising given the huge amount of press it has received. The media love it when a foreign entity pays close attention to Japanese culture, and in this case it's culture you can eat, even if the restaurants that "Michelin Guide Tokyo 2008" recommends are a bit pricey for most consumers.
The elitist aspect of the guide isn't really what stirred up controversy, though. Everyone felt flattered that the European tire-maker, which began rating restaurants in France in 1900 as a means of promoting driving, and thus selling more of its wares, awarded more "stars" to Tokyo eateries than it has to any other city it has inspected, including Paris. The complaints were over Michelin's undisclosed criteria for evaluation. Because many Japanese people believe their culture is unique, they may have doubts about outside attempts to rate it.
Jun Yokokawa, a noted food critic, commented on TBS's morning show "Pinpon" that of the 150 Tokyo restaurants awarded either one, two or three stars, a disproportionate number were sushi bars, a result he believes has more to do with the current "international sushi boom" than with the intrinsic qualities of the establishments.