Tokyo

First stop our local bakery, Luposto, for some breakfast carbs, stashing some away for emergency snacks later. Then a 5-minute walk to Nissin, the international supermarket, to stock up on familiar ingredients for the next few days of breakfasts, home-cooked dinners and on-the-go snacks, which we dropped off back at the apartment before heading out to explore our local area of Azabu.

A bit of aimless wandering to get under the skin of our area led us to brunch at Label, a super cute, hidden, very Japanese café (no need to book).

We soaked up the backstreets of Azabu heading in the general direction of Roppongi, stopping for a rest, green tea and a pretty Japanese sweet at Shiroikuro. The name translates as white and black, and the café specialises in Japanese sweets made with black and white soybeans.

A little more wandering took us to Kome Marché — a graphic designer studio-turned rice shop. We ogled at the brown paper sacks full of brown rice from different regions of Japan, and their pretty labels explaining their taste and texture profiles, before ordering a couple of bags of 'Milky Princess' rice from Akita Prefecture. The kids watched open-mouthed while the owner poured our rice into a rickety machine that spat the husks out leaving a pile of perfectly polished white rice to take back home.

We sat with a coffee at Sakurazaka playground while the kids had some playtime. The slides there are excellent.

Then we headed on to the Mori Art Museum. The viewing gallery there is free and has some of the best views of Tokyo.

We closed out the day with a quintessentially Tokyo experience: hailing a taxi home.