Bach never got the chance to use any of them. Tokyo's new governor sat him down and held the entire meeting in front of the media - not just a polite camera or two, but a great heaving scrum of them, broadcasting live.
With the nervous air of a prosecution witness who finds himself implicated in the crime, Bach had to admit he saw "great potential" to cut the estimated Y3tn ($26.4bn) cost of the Tokyo Games. The woman sitting across from him was calm, poised and ever-so-slightly predatory. Welcome to Tokyo, Mr Bach. This city belongs to Yuriko Koike.
Since she defied her own party to run for and win the Tokyo governorship in July last year, Koike, 64, has become Japan's most popular leader, with approval ratings as high as 86 per cent. National politics has bent itself to her presence. Even though she is a member of his party, Koike is the de facto opposition to prime minister Shinzo Abe.
She has done it by running hard against the old guard in her Liberal Democratic party; against her nationalist predecessor Shintaro Ishihara; against the City Hall bureaucracy; and, more generally, against the grey legions of men who pull the levers of power in Japan. If the momentum holds, Koike's blend of charisma, conservatism and civic populism could yet make her Japan's next prime minister.
"Not to rely on the status quo, to seek change and reform constantly - that is the conservative way to think. Change in order to preserve," she says at her home in the city's Nerima ward. Tokyo politics, she declares, is still stuck in the 19th century and simple reform is not enough. "That's why my goal is a Great Reform of Tokyo."
Perched on the sofa in her tiny apartment, Koike speaks with the straight back, wide-open eyes and clearly modulated phrases of a TV newscaster, which is how she first made her name, as presenter of the popular World Business Satellite programme in the years when Japan's economic boom was turning to bust. She entered politics in 1992, migrating through a series of minor parties, until the patronage of former LDP prime minister Junichiro Koizumi made her environment minister from 2003 to 2006. She also served as defence minister, briefly, during the first Abe cabinet of 2007.
Koike backed the wrong candidate for LDP leader, however, falling out with Abe and languishing on the backbenches until last summer. Her career seemed over. Then she gambled outrageously by running against the LDP candidate for Japan's biggest directly elected job, governing the 13.6m people of Tokyo. She won in a landslide.
"The other candidates were looking for a job. I was different. I was quitting parliament. I could have just stayed. But I quit and did it as a challenge." It was not a victory of arithmetic, she says, but chemistry.
Koike's tools to achieve her goals, such as more kindergartens for Tokyo's working mothers, are the transparency that Bach ran into; relentlessness on the minutiae of city life (she digresses for a while about toilets in primary schools); and above all else, a spectacular talent for political message and theatre that shapes the world around her.
The two finest examples are the disputes over Olympic costs and relocation of the famous Tsukiji fish market, neither of which was a political issue until Koike magicked them up. Soon after her election, the new governor postponed Tsukiji's imminent move, citing concerns about soil contamination.
Whether the soil contamination is serious remains hard to judge. Regardless, the saga has dominated the news for months, pitting Koike against hapless bureaucrats, arrogant predecessors and vested interests, all in the name of public safety. Political observers question the governor's endgame, but she says it is simple: "Can we confirm safety or not? It ends with that single point."
Allowing visitors into her home - something most Japanese never do - adds to the Koike message because, to put it bluntly, the most powerful woman in Japan lives in a granny flat. Her living space is homely, cheerful and cannot be much more than 30 sq metres in total.
"I used to live with my mother but she passed away, and it's dangerous to live alone, so now I live with my cousin and his children," she says. The governor lives in the small flat upstairs and her cousin's family live downstairs. It is a common arrangement in Japan. "Hearing the children's voices makes me very happy," she says.
There is a small family shrine with pictures of Koike's parents, some fabulous flowers and a stand draped with dozens of passes from past meetings and events. Yet the overwhelming impression is one of modesty. There is no gold-plated bathtub, no 100in flatscreen TV. Let the citizens of Tokyo rest assured: if Koike is making any money out of politics, she is not spending it on real estate.
Koike built her home, in the working-class Tokyo neighbourhood she represented in parliament, as an "eco-house". It has LED lighting, double glazing and screens to keep out the heat in summer. "I wanted to build it since I was environment minister," she says. "It may not be CO2-free, but CO2 is considerably reduced."
Isn't the greatest environmental harm the waste from Japan's constant rebuilding, though? Koike has a ready policy answer, citing the 820,000 empty houses in Tokyo, and its forecast population peak in 2025. "Not just building new properties but making use of old is an extremely important policy," she says. "You can think about using empty properties to support childminders and care workers on low wages."
The next act politically for Koike comes this summer with elections to Tokyo's city assembly. She has founded a political academy to train candidates for her new "Tokyo First" group. Such is her popularity, they could sweep the LDP out of office, even while she remains in the LDP. "We don't need passengers on the bus doing each other favours, we need people in the assembly to paint the future of Tokyo," she says.
Making the leap from there to the prime minister's office is tough given Japan's parliamentary system. Yet there are ways it could happen. Already, the risk that Koike candidates could sweep the Tokyo constituencies is a constraint on Abe's ability to call a general election. If he steps down after a successful 2020 Olympics, and the LDP can stomach her, she would be their obvious route to holding on to power.
Getting that chance will depend on her results in Tokyo, and unlike the constraints of ministerial office, she is revelling in the freedom. "The governor of Tokyo is a kind of president and they can act on extremely general policies," she says. "It's worth the effort. I'm aiming for a great success. By managing a megacity well, I want to leave behind a new kind of politics."
Asked to name her favourite item, Koike simply picks up So-chan, her Yorkshire terrier, and strikes an adoring pose. So-chan - a Tokyo archetype - is small, hairy, dressed in green and has passed the time by pottering about the apartment in an amiably possessive manner.
So how old is So-chan? Koike gives a look of coquettish disappointment that would work for Hollywood. "It's rude to ask a lady her age," she says.
As Yuriko Koike cruised to power last summer, opponents compared her rise to that of Brexit and Donald Trump, accusing her of the same political sin: populism.
Given the huge electorates in Japan's big cities, name recognition matters more than a party machine. Like their counterparts in London and New York, therefore, gubernatorial winners tend to be larger than life. The closest thing Japan has had to a populist in recent years - former Osaka governor Toru Hashimoto - still dominates the politics of Japan's second-largest city.
Koike's style is charismatic and theatrical; her campaign was largely free of ideology or interest group politics; and like the dramatic votes in the US and UK last year, she won by railing against the establishment. One of her slogans is "Tomin First", or "Tokyo Citizens First". ("Not America First," she hastens to add.)
But her version means putting more information on the city homepage and helping elderly residents stay in their own homes, rather than excluding outsiders. Nor does she make special claims for the virtue or wisdom of the ordinary citizen, perhaps the defining characteristic of populism. "By providing hard-working Tokyoites with more information, they can make wiser choices," she says. That creed is the opposite of "the people know best".
Indeed, Koike offers implicit criticism of Trump and Brexit, saying a politician who calls for change has a responsibility to deliver sound policies. "It's not a beauty contest, it's not just support at a point in time, you need to show how you will meet expectations afterwards," she says.
She rejects nativism. "I think Brexit and Mr Trump taking office are opportunities for Tokyo," she says. "I'd like all sorts of skilled and talented people to come and be a stimulus to Tokyo. Such people are welcome."
Robin Harding is the FT's Tokyo bureau chief
Photographs: Ko Sasaki for the FT; Kyodo News via Getty Images; Richard Atrero de Guzman/NurPhoto via Getty Images; Cameron Spencer/Getty Images;
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017
