If you are looking for a bit of a breather from the rigours of work then Tokyo is not the first place that springs to mind.

The Japanese capital is a city which keeps you on your toes, a baffling mix of Eastern culture and Western habits.

At busy downtown junctions international megabrands bathe the streets in harsh bursts of neon while groups of cheerful, noisy diners spill out of tiny restaurants which line shadowy alleyways beneath viaducts carrying the elegant shinkansen (bullet trains).

Buses, taxis, subways and trains weave through the cluttered, claustrophobic mass of buildings which stretches 20 miles south to Yokohama and beyond – a seething, restless manifestation of the economic powerhouse which is modern Japan.

Solitude and peace are hard to find on the sweltering streets of Tokyo in the summer.

But rest and relaxation is what the ship’s company of HMS Exeter needed, and their Japanese hosts were more than happy for the hard-working sailors to take their ease in the land of the rising sun.

The Type 42 destroyer berthed at the Harumi Pier ferry terminal, a short ride from the bright lights of the city centre, but a blessedly quiet corner of this bustling city.

With the Japanese Defence Force host destroyer JDS Shirayuki berthed just astern of Exeter, many of the 270 or so officers and sailors – including a party of 17 Officer Cadets on Initial Sea Training (IST) – took advantage of the five-day visit to carefully explore the country and her ways, and to unwind – a welcome change from the usual relentless round of official functions and ambassadorial roles.

Even days at sea in transit between ports of call and exercises are less of a respite than is normal, as much of the ship’s husbandry and minor maintenance must be carried out at these times, preparing for the next high-profile event.

The ship must also maintain the tempo of routine raining, often fitting in exercises within the ship or with other navies.

While in Tokyo one group stuck to the ‘work hard, play hard’ philosophy and headed to the flanks of Mount Fuji, a couple of hours by coach from Tokyo.

A challenging evening trek took them to a hut for a brief overnight stay, from where they resumed their climb at 2am on the Sunday – and were rewarded with a glorious sunrise at 4.30am, though the ever-present threat of low clouds ensured the experience was brief.

“It was absolutely spectacular,” said Lt Tush Chatterjee, Exeter’s Deputy Marine Engineer Officer.

“The final 500 metres of the ascent was on boulders and jagged rocks with a slope of between 50 and 70 degrees, and the temperature was zero. By 4.35am it was a white-out – you could not see a thing.

“It is certainly not a climb for novices, though thousands of people made the journey up to the crater.”

The IST party, led by Lt Cdr Gareth Jones, joined Exeter in Korea, and their brief time in the Royal Navy (around 14 weeks) had already taken them to Vladivostock, Tokyo, Okinawa, the Philippines and Brunei, the latter due to include a two-day jungle survival course.

Another group of 22 headed up to the Hakone National Park, and although the same clouds which enveloped their colleagues atop the volcano meant they never saw the revered mountain, they consoled themselves by lengthening their lives by seven years (the benefit derived from each black eggs consumed, which are hard-boiled in the local sulphur springs).

A number of them also enjoyed a soak in an onsen – a natural hot spring – where tradition dictates that birthday suit is the required rig.

Disneyland Tokyo, not far from the ship’s berth, also featured on the agenda, as did some serious shopping (and window shopping in the seriously expensive Ginza district).

Sporting fixtures were arranged for the ship’s rugby team and three men, including Commanding Officer Cdr Andrew Reed, played for the British Embassy cricket team in a rain-affected match.

The rugby match resulted in a curtailed trip for one officer cadet, who flew in from the UK to join the ship, played rugby on his first full day in Japan, and next day was on the plane back home, nursing a broken wrist.

But there was a more serious and formal side to the visit as well. Although low key, Exeter’s stopover was important enough to be supported by the presence of a senior RN officer, CINCFLEET’s Commander (Operations) Rear Admiral Paul Lambert.

In close consultation with the Defence Attaché in Tokyo, Japanese-speaker Capt Simon Chelton RN, there was a round of calls to local officials to be made by senior officers of both HMS Exeter and her accompanying RFA tanker Grey Rover.

And some 20 miles along the coast in Yokohama, Exeter’s sailors had an important duty to perform.

The Hodogaya Commonwealth Cemetery in the suburbs of Yokohama contains the graves of seven sailors from the wartime cruiser HMS Exeter – prisoners of war captured when the ship was sunk off Java in March 1942.

There the current ratings and officers held a service of remembrance in the fierce heat of a bright summer morning, laying cap tallies and poppies on their predecessors’ graves.

One IST officer found himself briefly in the limelight – S/Lt Phillip Bent played the Last Post and Reveille on a bugle flown out from the UK with Rear Admiral Lambert. Phillip had spent much of the previous evening in Exeter’s tiller flat, getting to grips with the instrument.

A cocktail party and visits to and from the Shirayuki were also staged, as was a visit by a party of orphans, who were treated to a tour of the ship and a tea party.

Exeter – “an old ship with a young heart” according to Cdr Reed, as she has a state-of-the-art combat system – left Portsmouth in March, and is not due back until November, so Japan forms a turning point in the deployment; she is now heading home, though there is still plenty of hard work ahead in the shape of high-tempo exercises and port visits.

Cdr Reed, who assumed command in Hong Kong in June, said: “If you are told you are going out to the Far East for eight months, sometimes you do not immediately realise there is a lot of hard work involved.”

Cdr Reed pointed out that the ship must maintain a high state of readiness, and could be called away for a particular mission at any time, as sister ship HMS Glasgow was called to East Timor on a previous deployment.

“It was easy to take over command of the ship,” said Cdr Reed. “It is a good and happy ship’s company who are working well. I was very well supported from the moment I joined which made my job far easier.

“I also think I am one of the luckiest people in the Navy, doing what I wanted to when I joined 30 years ago – can you think of anything better than taking command of a destroyer doing a Far East deployment? I can’t. It’s pretty special.”

A sentiment echoed by all but the most world-weary of Exeter’s sailors, from the lucky few who bumped into one of the major players on the Tokyo scene, a Canadian businessman who ensured the Brits had access to the hottest clubs in town, to those who simply immersed themselves in the invariably polite, endlessly patient, slightly reserved and almost totally incomprehensible maelstrom of 12 million people that is the city of Tokyo.