Today, we made a pilgrimage to Akihabara today, mecca for geeks. In particular I dragged everyone to Yodobashi, the photo giant. While the camera gear was more expensive than I could get at home, they had tons of great accessories like camera bags (you can never have enough camera bags) and my favorite lens cleaning cloth - Microdear (yes, I have a favorite lens cleaning cloth - You can get them at Amazon too.). Since Michael's (7) birthday is coming up, we got him a little digital camera (a slick little black Fujifilm Finepix Z20fd). He's been snapping pix like mad since then.

After Yodobashi, we played some video games (including a cool Gundam game in pods) and headed to Shinjuku to get lunch at Takashimaya Department store and shop some. On the way from the train station to the store, we passed through "Little Seattle" - the row that has our Microsoft Japan sales office, REI, Eddie Bauer, and Starbucks (and now a Krispy Kreme with a huge line out the door). Our tempura lunch at the Tunahachi (a big tempura chain) in the store was nice as was the visit to the legendary food department in the basement of Takashimaya.

The ladies stayed to shop, so I took the boys back to the hotel. We stopped off at the Motoyama Milk Bar for a bit of refreshment; after seeing the name, I had to try it out. It really was a milk bar, serving great milk products like ice cream, milk, panna cotta, and so on (apparently, it's unhomogenized milk from Hokkaido). I had an absolutely lovely Coffee Milk in a cute bottle; it was like a frappuccino done right -- creamy and sweet but not cloying, with great coffee taste. I am dreaming of coffee milk and may have to come back to Japan just to get another one.