Museums want you to drop by, of course, but they also want you to linger, to explore, take your time -- the whole afternoon, if possible. To this end, no respectable museum can be without cafes and shops to enhance the experience.

In fact, museum cafes, usually handily adjacent to the shop, often appeal to visitors as much as the exhibition they've been to see. It was certainly par for the course that a flash and luxurious restaurant/bar opened last year on the 51st floor of the Mori Tower in Tokyo's new Roppongi Hills -- right below the tower's magnificent Mori Art Museum. Before that, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, in the Takebashi district of Chiyoda Ward, had beckoned the gallery-going public with a new French restaurant.

Even in Ueno Park, the Taito Ward home of many long-established museums of art and science, the trend has been reflected in the renovation of these doughty institutions' restaurants and cafes.