Two weeks ago I spent a few nights at Tokyo's Park Hyatt hotel - famous for the scene in Lost in Translation where a lonesome Bill Murray nurses a drink looking over the twinkling lights of the city below.
I visited during a crisp November when the daytime vistas from the 52nd floor were drenched in blue skies and sunshine. The view stretched over myriad skyscrapers and Meiji Park, smoke wafting from the Meiji Temple, to the sea beyond.
Landing back in Beijing last Saturday came as a shock. I touched down during one of the worst periods of smog the city has experienced: the acrid air smelled strongly of burning coal, visibility in some places was less than 200 metres, and the sky above us weighed down like lead.
We were lucky. By Tuesday 700 flights had been cancelled. Beijing Capital International Airport innocently cried fog, but the United States embassy's pollution monitoring system declared that the city was shrouded in 'hazardous' pollution.
Citizens furious about the smog and angry at senior leaders for sheltering behind air filters have been joining the dots. Yes, there may have been a light snow coating the capital on Monday and the planes could have been delayed by bad weather. But in a country where official readings constantly underestimate toxic levels of pollution, the people just aren't buying it.
The situation is not confined to the capital, of course. Last month, Friends of the Earth rated Hong Kong as eighth among 566 cities worldwide for air pollution. However, contamination of the air in Beijing is made worse by the bad stink of a government cover-up.