Wow, you guys are fantastic! Thank you all! I especially love the idea of hairdrying my pastry to give it a refresh!

I am not a huge fan of either green tea or coffee so I plan on taking some good old English tea bags with me. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that I can obtain some milk from the hotel room service.

For the first part of my stay I will be right by Tokyo station, so any bakery suggestions would be fantastic. I do have breakfast included at my first hotel, but not at a couple of the hotels later on in my trip (Kyoto, second half Tokyo).

I've come across this before in a few places, especially a trip years ago to Russia. I got very good at asking 'has this dish got meat in it, or ham, or chicken' because apparently those two "didn't count"!!

Exactly. As the sun has usually set in Japan by 5pm and many of the main attractions open between 10am and 4pm, I, like many visitors, prefer to get breakfast out of the way by 9am (often earlier).

Similar tricks apply when using a hotel water heater to make English style tea. Make sure the water is good and fresh and you can get the water to reheat to boiling. There's a Natural Lawson inside Tokyo station with small cartons of fresh milk. Worth getting a premium kind rather than the standard version from Meiji.
I'd hold off judgement about green tea until you've tried some good ones. The stuff sold in the West in tea bags with instructions to use freshly boiled water tastes just like I imagine hot urine would.

I'll definitely second the recommendation for Mt Thabor's Milk Bread. If you're in the area, I'd also urge you to try Maruichi Bagels near Shirokan Takanawa station (about a 20 minute walk from the Mt Thabor bakery), some great vegetarian options. In between the two is Patisserie Le Pommier, a great place to stop for black tea.

Green tea in Japan is a different animal than the junk you find in the west. I expect that you might like houjicha (roasted green tea), especially a high quality one.

A company that makes really good black tea in Japan is Lupicia. You can find it in department stores.

I think there are a lot of second rate bakeries in Japan, although they might highly in a country like the US. I recommend Viron, which has a branch in the Marunouchi bldg near Tokyo station. Also they open at 9 am..... at least the Shibuya store. The problem is that many bakeries are in shopping malls or department stores that open at 10.

Artisanal bakeries open earlier. At least my favorite Levain, which is near Yoyogi koen.

p.s. Can't you say niku-wa in the sense of "regarding meat in general". Ga implies specificity. I realize that if you use arimasu then generally you should use ga.

p.p.s. I really don't like Mt. Thabor. Expats who live in Azabu-Juban rave about it for some odd reason. They can't even make a decent baguette and they make "old school" Japanese baked goods, which seem to be inspired by American Wonderbread ca. 1950s.

The dressing on a morning set salad is more likely to be a seafood base, IME. Although, I've always wondered if that was a regional thing.

And about the bread: any (& as far as I know, all) commercial bread in Japan will have at least beef fat in it and usually pork fat as well for flavouring and as a cheap preservative. For a strict vegetarian, I wouldn't trust any baked product unless I knew exactly where it came from. For vegans, I would simply not buy any food in Japan unless able to shop at some very specific stores. For vegetarians that aren't that strict or can accept it or are simply OK with seafood, have at it and enjoy.

All sorts of green tea out there. The generic stuff that most people drink in an office is rather nice - not much flavour, but apparently huge amounts of caffeine. While I was living there I also developed rather a strong liking for some of the barley teas, although like the green teas, there are so many out there that it can be a bit hit and miss. Which is a long winded way of saying try a few if you get a chance. You know, Because.

Good luck on the second part of milk & hotels... You'll get packets of whitener meant for coffee. Most rooms will have a fridge though and convenience stores will all sell little cartons of milk.

Don't know if anyone else has mentioned it, but Japanese milk plants usually/often treat milk at a lower temp than is common in many other countries. That means that milk will often retain the, err, "original" aroma of raw milk. It's not off, it's meant to be like that. Of course, when it is starting to go off you can't tell.

Isn't it rather the opposite? I think nearly all milk sold in Japan is UHT (ultra-high temperature) sterilized, like much of the milk in Europe and most organic milk and half-and-half in the US. This gives it a "cooked" flavor which is undetectable to people who are used to it but does not taste good to those accustomed to milk pasteurized at a lower temperature.

Yes, correct. Japanese milk is flash pasteurized at 130C for 2 seconds and it has longevity quite far beyond the sell-by-date. I looked up UHT and this is indeed UHT pasteurization but the milk tastes better than the stuff like Paramalat found in continental Europe. The sell-by-date is similar to what you find in the US, which is odd if it is UHT. Maybe they are promoting an image that it is fresh milk when it is not. I have gone away for 2 weeks and returned and found the milk to be quite drinkable. But not 6 months at room temp like Parmalat.

There is one brand of Takanashi full fat milk that specifically uses pasteurization at 66C for 30 min. It is quite expensive around 250 yen per liter. Probably higher now due to Abenomics.
http://www.takanashi-milk.co.jp/products/ltlt/01.html

When I first moved there I found the flash pasteurized stuff to taste bad, sort of like a slight UHT flavor and I primarily bought the 66C/30 min milk. But this milk is from Iwate and it disappeared for a while after the earthquake. Then I became concerned about the radiation and would only buy Hokkaido milk for a while. Over time I became used to the taste. I wonder if you can become unaccustomed to it if you stay away for a while?

I'm quite sure you can and do. I traveled quite a lot as a kid -- still do, I guess. I remember vividly how bad the water away from home tasted, and how bad the water at home tasted when I got back. My home town has strongly-flavored manganese- and iron-rich water. It's called Yellow Springs for a reason.

As to inquiry by OP, �Morning Set� (モーニングセット) is generic term used in Japanese restaurants and contents can vary widely from restaurant to restaurant. If you are under the impression that content of �Morning Set� is same anywhere you go in Japan, then that is not the case.

For example, morning set at Hilton Tokyo ranges from 1682 yen to 3364 yen with content to fill stomach of large Western people, some contents are European items and other are Japanese items.

At popular Japanese donut chain shop, Mr. Donut, morning set is simple a cup of drink of your choice, one donut, and a small cup of soup. The price is 480 yen.

Also, do not expect there is �Morning Set� every place open in the morning. For example, Starbucks in Japan does not have �Morning Set.�

Viron is fair but not great. They often overcook their bread even at the Shibuya store which is their main branch. There is also often a peculiar bitter taste to their crust which I find unappealing. Most of my peers and I have given up on them as a go to for our needs now.

The Mt. Thabor "Japanese baked goods" point is good though. There are such delights as a hot dog in an open roll of wonder bread consistency and covered in mayonnaise. Very disgusting. Many similar items like that available.

The milk bread though is so popular it is sold and gobbled up at the Haneda branch even. It is a Tokyo-wide popular item and one which with a tall mug of black coffee is just amazing. They will put signs up in the store as to when the n ext batch is due from the oven and when they wrap that for you they leave the bag unsealed. Oh the delicious smell that emanates from that bag until you get to wherever you will munch on the bead.

Since my last few visits to Japan were dependent on my status as young child wrangler, the topic of milk has loomed large.

Most of the milk (like the ubiquitous Meiji kind in a blue and white carton) tastes like UHT milk - because it is. But there are quite a few options that taste just like the fresh milk sold in the UK.

I'd dismissed the idea of drinking English style tea some time ago but as we've been going out of our way to get decent milk lately, as a bonus we've had a few decent cuppas. For a simple rule of thumb; if the milk comes in a small thick glass bottle it's fine.

The milk we go nuts for when we are in Tokyo is sold at Mavie

The main branch is close to Roppongi, but we use the branch at Azabu Juban (Mavie Organic Station)

http://azabu9.wix.com/mavie-plus#!informationmap/cc8p
or
http://azabu.organicstation.jp/access.html

It's an organic wine shop, but if you go in and turn left - there's the milk in a refrigerated section as well as some seriously delicious fruit yogurts and yogurt drinks. Not cheap, just exceptionally good.
Milk sold is this: http://www.rookyfarm.com/milk.html it is heated at 80C for 15 minutes.

I guess when it comes to Japanese pastries I am old school� My choices are:

Yakisoba Pan (焼きそばパン)
Karee (Curry) Pan (カレーパン)
Meronn (Melon) Pan (メロンパン)

I guess I am more of �B級グルメ� type of a person� I like pizza, ham, and corm of Japanese pastries, but for my taste many overdo amount of cheese or mayonnaise. Some put so much cheese when melted and warm mixed with grease from meat I cannot tell if it is cheese or mayonnaise.

^^ Exactly my three favorites as well.

I once ate something which was characterised as ホットドッグドーナツサンド (or something similar), mostly because I couldn't imagine it was actually what it sounded to be. It was pretty terrible. This was from a vending machine as well, so probably that didn't help.