Next mission for Tom Cruise: shooting in Tokyo?

Actor Tom Cruise waves during a photo session following a news conference in Tokyo June 20, 2006. Cruise is in Tokyo for the Japan premiere of his movie 'Mission: Impossible III'. REUTERS/Toshiyuki Aizawa (JAPAN)

Tom Cruise's next mission may not be impossible, but it could be difficult: He wants free run of downtown Tokyo for a week to shoot action sequences for a future movie.

"I'd like to shoot in Tokyo, if I could have downtown for a week. Just at night," Cruise, in Tokyo for the premiere of "Mission: Impossible III," told a news conference on Tuesday.

"People might not be very happy with the traffic and let us have it for a week, (but) we'd have a sequence you'd forever remember."

In fact, Cruise said he and his colleagues originally wanted to film some scenes for "Mission: Impossible III" in Japan, but ultimately decided on Shanghai because it had "the exact buildings we needed to make the sequence work."

A Japan enthusiast who starred in and produced the movie "The Last Samurai," Cruise later met with Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa, who presented him with a citation for promoting Japan through film and a traditional "happi" coat.

Cruise, who topped Forbes magazine's annual list of powerful celebrities last week, has also chartered an entire 1,300-seat high speed "bullet" train to take 150 fans on a trip from Tokyo to Osaka on Wednesday as part of the publicity campaign for the movie.

During the trip he plans to chat with each passenger individually and have photographs taken with them, according to a spokesman for film distributor UIP.