We didn’t go very far today. We started out wandering around looking for a Starbucks. The coffee in the few places we’ve tried was disappointing, so we thought we’d get something that we knew was bad. On the way we found some ridiculously expensive stores, Gucci, Swarovski, Bulgari, and, oddly enough, Sony. Sony has a neat new Organic LED video screen coming out but I think it’s $1700 for an 11″ screen. The picture was beautiful, but I don’t watch anything that requires a $1700 screen. We finally found the Starbucks and I had the Matcha latte, which was surprisingly good.

We met an old friend from Portland for lunch and she took us to an okonomiyaki store. Her family and our family go way, way back. I think her mom moved back to Japan for a while and she grew up here, even though her grandparents were in Portland. I had “modanyaki” which I guess is really “Modern Yaki.” It has soba mixed in with the okonomiyaki.

She also took us to get some Japanese sweets, dango and matcha bean paste.

Her kids are both going to college next year, so we didn’t get to see them or her husband who almost got his PhD at Portland State University. A.B.D. is a sad place to be. I think he even had his thesis mostly finished before he moved back to Japan to take care of the family business.

After that we just did some more random shopping. When I first tried to buy a new PSP at one of the local stores and the lines were horrendous. It’s the start of the month and I think they released some new games. I did finally get the PSP, which is a replacement for the one that was stolen last week. Now to see if it will work in the US. I’m still just randomly punching buttons instead of reading the instructions for these Japanese games.