Day 5 - Omotesando

Jake and I had wanted to do a little shopping today so we headed out with Cricket to Omotesando. Omotesando is an upscale shopping area with lots of big name designer shops like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Harry Winston. It also has this amazing shopping mall that unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures of, because it is like nothing I have seen in the US. The mall is at least one complete city block long and six floors of shopping. But the interesting part of the mall is that it is one big spiral - the ends of the floors wrap around to the next floor - it is so interesting to stand at the top and view the spiral mall down six floors, sorry I couldn't capture a picture for you!

But even the mall is full of upscale designer shops so that is not where we chose to find treats for everyone, we headed across the street to the six story Kiddyland building! I had so much fun shopping there 2 years ago, I couldn't wait to get in there to see what was new. It is just sensory overload from the minute you walk in. There are people everywhere and every inch of the store is full of merchandise. The floors are arranged by electronics/robotics, book characters, comic characters, etc. There is even one floor entirely devoted to Snoopy! We took a couple of pictures of interesting Japanese stuffed characters. Jake also took a short video of a USB device popular here that is a little dog that looks like he is doing something interesting to your computer. We didn't have a way to link the video clip to this site but I am sure Jake will share it when we get back if you like!

After shopping at Kiddyland we headed over to Oriental Bazaar a few doors down. That store is a perfect place to find all things Japanese. I made Jake pose outside with one of the samurai that are next to the doors.

While Jake and I were shopping Cricket was off to an appointment and we had a set meet up time. Shopping always makes me thirsty and this was also the first day we have been here that it was truly hot and humid so we decided we must have a Starbucks frappachino - how hard could it be to find a Starbucks -they are everywhere, right? Jake and I start walking, and walking, searching high and low. It was miserably hot and I was getting unbelievably cranky. Jake found a posted map and was searching away (while I tried to stay in the shade!) when finally he motioned me to come over and when I asked him if he found it he pointed up to a flag on the street pole that had the Starbucks logo and a arrow pointing down the side street - there truly is a Starbuck's everywhere!

While the Omotesando area is the high-end shopping district, it also contains Takeshita Dori, a quarter mile street of busy shops that cater to Japanese teenagers. We're going back there on Sunday- I'm sure we'll have more to write about Takeshita later.