Lewis Hamilton courted controversy once again as he spent a large part of a pre-Japanese Grand Prix news conference taking pictures on his phone.

The Briton, who struck a markedly different tone after an engine fire ended his race in Malaysia, drew criticism from some quarters as he appeared distracted.

Hamilton, who sits 23 points behind Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg in defence of his Formula One world championship title, had to address questions over his antics.

"Just some snaps of us drivers, it's quite funny," he said when asked what he was doing on his phone.

"Hey man, we've been doing this a long, long time and it's the same each time. We've got to keep adding new things to it."

When the phone was out of sight, Hamilton cut a more defiant figure as he spoke about the woes that visited him at Sepang, with the 31-year-old insisting the incident was behind him.

"I've not been thinking about the last race," he said. "Usually when I leave the race track I think about a lot of other things, I have a lot of other stuff going on, so I was in Tokyo enjoying my time. I love being in Tokyo. It's one of my favourite cities, one of my top three favourite cities in the world."