All those stars Michelin awarded Tokyo restaurants are impressing many, but not a core group of prominent Tokyo chefs and critics. “Japanese food was created here, and only Japanese know it,” chef Toshiya Kadowaki told the New York Times. “How can a bunch of foreigners show up and tell us what is good or bad?”

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Michelin’s first-ever guide to Tokyo gave the city’s restaurants a combined 191 stars, more than Paris (98 stars) and New York City (54 stars) have together. Sure, Tokyo also has far more restaurants (160,000) than Paris (20,000) and New York (23,000), but the news of the quality of the Japanese cuisine—Michelin released the Tokyo ratings last November—has resonated with travelers. According to the Japanese government, seven out of 10 international travelers to the country cite food as the primary reason for visiting. 

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Seriously. The nation that brought us the capsule hotel has done it again. The country’s working poor—and salarymen who don’t want to spring for a capsule after a night of drinking—are spending nights in Internet cafes, according to a Reuters story. For $12 to $20, they get a reclining chair in front of a computer, soft drinks, comics and, of course, Internet access. No word on how many low-budget travelers (also known as the backpack lunatic fringe) are spending nights in Internet cafes, but Wikitravel suggest Japanese cafes are an option, noting that some even provide a mat to sleep on and a shower. 

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Largely because the author and NPR contributor wanted to quit smoking. “You can’t walk on the street and smoke there,” he told Newsday. “You have to stand by a special ashtray.” Sedaris also responded to charges that he sometimes fabricates stories.

Borat rides a wave of hype back into the Zeitgeist, joining established icons the Stardust hotel, Bill Bryson, Charlie Trotter’s and the travel trinket in our recap of what’s on travelers’ minds this week.

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Souvenirs
* In this intriguing flickr photo set, Michael Hughes displays souvenirs of world landmarks and icons in place of the real things.

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The Real Face of Boratstan

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Chicago
* Seven Windy City restaurants — the most for any U.S. city — made the list: Alinea, Avenues, Arun’s, Seasons, Tru, Everest and Charlie Trotter’s.

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The Dominican Republic Offers a New Place in the Sun

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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
* Two Three weeks in a row at the top for Bryson’s memoir of growing up in 1950s Iowa.

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R.I.P. Stardust Hotel

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Bonuses Don’t Cut Turnover for TSA

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Travel writer Ben Brazil recently accomplished this very feat—nibbling sashimi, enjoying private city tours, wandering through Asakusa’s old temples. Please, he writes in Sunday’s Washington Post, “refrain from envy.” As he discovered, Tokyo is not the world’s most expensive city anymore: “It’s fallen all the way to No. 2.”

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Oh, those wacky Japanese. They eat whale meat. They love comic books. They sleep off their sake buzz in hotel rooms the size of refrigerators. And they host loads of Western writers who love to write about such wacky things. The latest is Seth Stevenson, who recently filed a week’s worth of dispatches from Tokyo for Slate’s Well-Traveled feature. No deeper cultural insights here. Just some corny laughs. “[I]f you’re still hung up on the whale, you should know that you can get horse sashimi here,” Stevenson writes. “I have not eaten horse sashimi, but if I do, I am planning this exchange: I take a bite of horse, cough, clear throat, cough. Companion: ‘Something wrong with your throat?’ Me: ‘Just a little horse.’”