The 1964 Games were the first of my dozen summer Olympics and you know what they say – the first always tastes sweeter, whether it's a kiss or a curry.

As a newlywed of just some six weeks I said goodbye to my lovely but now sadly late wife Jean and set off from Heathrow with a clutch of Fleet Street's finest who had decided to take this still wet-behind-the-ears rookie reporter under their wing.

The next few weeks would provide an education in life as well as in journalism. I remember playing cricket with a rolled up newspaper and ping-pong ball along the aisle of the VC 10 jetting us to Tokyo via Bangkok and Hong Kong, cheered on by the cabin staff and fellow passengers. 

Imagine such fun and games on board an aircraft today? We would have been offloaded and arrested at the next refuelling stop. But these were joyous and more relaxed times, so different from today.

Finally, as we descended towards our destination, the famous Eiffel-lookalike Tokyo Tower came into view through the mist. One of our weary group woke from a slumber fortified by copious glugs of British Airways' finest claret and gasped: "Bloody hell! I've been travelling for three days and just arrived in Paris!"

Tokyo itself was warm and welcoming. Kimono-clad beauties bowed low to greet us, laden with trays of saké and delicious sushi as we came through Haneda Airport, and insisting on carrying our luggage.

The sweet fragrance that wafted through the air was that of cherry blossom, not the pungent, acrid smell of gun-smoke we were to encounter in the subsequent Games in Mexico and Montreal.

Indeed, Tokyo 1964 was probably the last of the Games that the old Baron himself had envisaged, pure and simple.

No drugs (as far as we could ascertain unless it was a couple of paracetamol as a morning-after pill to alleviate the effect of the saké), no scandal, no boycotts, no demos and thankfully no terrorism. 

No militia lined the streets or surrounded the stadia. We were greeted with bonhomie, not body-searches.

In retrospect, they may not have been aesthetically the greatest of Games but in my experience they were the most enjoyable.

Not that everything was perfect. For one thing English was relatively non-existent. Certainly there was none on the confusing street signs or on the lips of most taxi drivers. Tokyo was literally a maze. There were no public toilets outside the Olympic complex. Well, there were, but they were just holes in the ground above open sewers.

Almost 60 years back the Land of the Rising Sun was not the progressive economic powerhouse that has subsequently held World Athletics Championships, shared a football World Cup and is currently platforming the Rugby World Cup.

Tokyo 1964 was not held without some controversy, largely because Japan had been awarded the Games less than 20 years after the end of World War Two and memories of the atrocities committed in the name of that enemy nation lingered in the memory.

My late but then newly-acquired father-in-law was aghast that Tokyo should be the Olympic destination. "You'll hate the Japs, nasty little b******s," he warned me before I left.

He had good reason to loathe them, having been their guest as a prisoner of war for almost four years in the notorious prison camp at Changi in Singapore, and working on the Burma Railway.

But he was wrong. I don't think I encountered a Japanese I did not like. They were charming, dignified and welcoming, apparently determined to show that times – and their culture – had changed.

No-one played political Games and perhaps for the last time competitors seemed to reflect the Olympic ideal that it is not so much the winning, but the taking part. What a pity such purity of sporting spirit was not to prevail.

For one thing, there are pros involved now – plus quite a few cons. In the Games I have covered since I have seen the Olympics manifestly outgrow anything that Tokyo could have offered them more than half-a-century ago. 

They have become over-commercialised, unwieldy and are too easily corruptible.

Then there was a simple, innocent, charm about the 1964 Games that has never been totally replicated, no doubt because the Olympic bandwagon has rolled deep into too-frequently malevolent territory. 

Montreal, Moscow and Los Angeles were winged by boycotts and then in Seoul a red-eyed Ben Johnson injected drugs into the Olympic bloodstream where it has been coursing virulently through the veins ever since.

Even now I sometimes hum the catchy jingle that woke us every day: "Good morning, Tokyo, happy to be greeting you."

Yes, these really were a happy Olympics, especially for Great Britain who, despite finishing 10th in the medal table, won 18 medals with long-jump golds from Lynn "The Leap" Davies and the original golden girl, Mary Rand.

Plus there was outsider Ann Packer's shock triumph in the 800 metres and the poignant moment when the wife of the walker Ken Matthews dashed onto the track to embrace him as he crossed the line.

It rained quite a lot in Tokyo but no-one seemed to mind. The Games were held late in the year, between October 10 and 24, and the last lap of the Torch Relay from Olympia to light the flame was poignantly run by the 19-year-old Yoshinori Sakai, a young athlete born in Hiroshima on the day of the atomic bomb.

There was no politics in the last of the Olympics summer wine, but a future eminent politician played his part. 

Menzies Campbell, later to become the Liberal Democrats leader, was a former rugby winger whose fleet-footedness translated into sprinting for Britain in Tokyo.

Now Sir Menzies, 78-year-old "Ming" typified how different those Games were to those that followed.

"They were free of drugs – at least we assumed they were – and it was before commercialism set in," he told insidethegames. 

"Adidas gave us a pair of spikes and a pair of warm-ups and if you were lucky you got a bag. 

"Most of us had only run on grass or cinder tracks and I remember the team captain, Robbie Brightwell, looking at all those wonderful facilities there and saying to us 'there are only two ways to compete here – be a total scrubber or go home with a gold medal.'"

Ming did not win gold but he was never a scrubber. His 10.2sec for the 100m was a British record that lasted for eight years and he once broke a 53-year-old record for the rarely run 300 yards. The year after Tokyo he was appointed British team captain.

Swimmer Anita Lonsborough, a gold medalist in Rome four years earlier, carried the British flag, but it was the Stars and Stripes that fluttered most triumphantly in the Olympic Stadium.

Bob Hayes, one of the fastest men ever seen, returned the 100m sprint title to the United States and his compatriot Billy Mills surprisingly defeated Australian favourite Ron Clarke in the 10,000m, becoming the first Native American to win Olympic gold.

The 5,000m was also a sad affair for the demoralised Clarke, who finished fourth to another American unknown, Bob Schul.

There were other shocks, too, and one of the biggest was how comparatively easy it became for us media hacks to gain access to the Olympic Village. Getting in was a piece of cake or, rather, a bottle of gin.

I should explain. Tokyo's Olympic Village was not the maximum-security compound that others, by necessity, later became. No scowling armed police or heavy-handed militia. Just one charming chap, booted and suited in civvies, checking passes at the gate.

However, entry for journalists was restricted to certain times, not all of them convenient for our deadlines. Although he spoke little English, our benevolent gatekeeper chum always seemed pleased to see us. We gathered he had a liking for all things British – not least, Booths Gin.

One of us happened to have a duty free bottle that we decided to present to him as a goodwill gesture, much to his delight.

From then on whenever we wanted to interview any of the athletes inside the Village he would motion us through without any check, bowing low as he smilingly murmured: "Ah, Booths!"

It was during such a Booths-facilitated excursion that I had one of the most memorable encounters of my career, becoming the first man to put a future world heavyweight champion on the floor.

I was wandering through the Village when, hurtling around a corner, pedaling furiously on a bike, came this large American with the biggest thighs I had ever seen.

He swerved to avoid me and promptly fell off. 

He looked the aggressive sort so I gulped and swiftly apologised. "No, problem," he replied, dusting himself down. 

"My fault. Shoulda looked where I was going. You okay fella?"

Thus, I became the first man to put Smokin' Joe Frazier on the floor.

Fortunately for me the late Joe, who went on to win the Olympic heavyweight gold and the World Heavyweight Championship, was just smilin' and not smokin' as he remounted and went on his way.

Ah, happy days…

And so the Olympic Rings have turned full circle. But my 2020 vision is far removed from the innocence of my first Olympics in the land of cherry blossom, and the ever-rising sun.

I have no doubt Tokyo will do a superb job as second time round hosts. But it cannot be the same as the class of 1964 which for me remains the Olympics' role model.