à tes souhaits! Pistache d'Abricot

Monday, which is a national holiday, I ran out to à tes souhaits! with a couple back-ups in mind further out from there in case they were closed or my patience was insufficient. The person in front of me counted 21 people in front of her when she called her partner. That's about typical for this shop on a weekend (it's reasonably accessible on a weekday). They were well staffed, so the line moved a little faster than I expected, but I was glad that I had an extra jacket, long pants, and hat in my bag for the outside part of the wait (if felt nicely warm at first when I first entered, but the door is open, so not so much once I got used to it), though the person several spots ahead who also looked like he ran there was not visibly suffering without doing so. I limited myself to only a few pictures of sites that could potentially be on future neighborhood course additions.

Selection was pretty good. I went for Pistache d'Abricot, which looked like something I would like. The apricot is a layer on top, under which is pistachio mousse (with pistachio cream on top), but under that there are nutty layers, including feuillantine praliné, which I don't usually associate with a fruity cake but I do associate with modern traditional fancy cake, so my regard for them has improved. This was definitely excellent cake. I suppose the distance was about 14 km, including about 1 km to and from stations coming back (the cake was fine, though maybe only because the mousse proportion was low).

This shop will make the cut when the quite good shops gets trimmed down to half their current size (hopefully), once I get all the current group up to 3 cakes each, which will make the designation more significant. Right now this category is just the not definitely below average group, though that's average among the places that I'm will to visit. For example, there was a much smaller patisserie 300 meters away that didn't seem to be having trouble with lines.

In the late afternoon, I went out again and completed verifying my memory of the Jinguumae central loop and then did clockwise on the new version of the Jinguumae northwest loop (probably wasn't necessary to change it, but it was nice to get some of it off Takeshita street, which is difficult to do even a slow walk due to crowds and finished off the linked Jinguumae central west loop. My plan is to finish off the Jinguumae northwest loop next, and then continue down to the revised Jinguumae--Jinnan and Jinnan loops (as well as try to get pie). The other neighborhood memory-check run will be in out toward Aoyama, where I didn't manage to get to Viking F (bakery) last week, but it requires that I avoid overtime work. Other plans for the week will depend on what the cake shops put out to replace cakes retiring Jan 15.

Viron: Tendresse

Ran to Viron in Marunouchi. As planned, I ran faster (around 7.6 km/h for 6.1 km) and started running earlier, but still walked back (no rain this time, so just had to stop for lights and cake). They had a couple cakes I hadn't seen before and I got Tendresse for 702 yen. This is sort of a chocolate mousse dome, although not that much. More of it was Bavarian cream. I don't recall whether the outer layer of chocolate mousse or the Bavarian cream that has it, but there is passion fruit, which harmonized well. The outer layer of chocolate (?) was a little gummy, but it is still pretty hot (high 30 degC today) and I haven't gotten to dome cakes, because I'm working on nut-based biscuits. The bottom is feuillantine praliné, which is classy compared to a sponge base, so that balances it out and I have no hesitation saying that this is excellent.

50.5 km Nakano-Shakujii History and Culture route

Today's goal was to navigate the Nakano-Shakujii History and Culture route from Shinjuku Central Park to Shakujii Park. First, going to Shinjuku Central Park, I found a third marker on the west side for the Shinjuku H&C route telling you where to take the second turn. This is redundant with the first marker, which does not show this marker on its map, but it does confirm which side of the street you are expected to run on, so I'll continue to look for markers. This part took 18'14''40.

Going north from where a starting marker would be, if there was one (it's possible that it's covered by a homeless living site, but I don't think so), at least there is a big map plaque confirming both the Nanano-Shakujii and Shinjuku H&C routes at the northeast corner of the park. The route is good, although not well marked everywhere. A couple marker map plaques were gone (the round ones don't seem to be as durable), and I marked on the map a couple places where the on-the-ground route did not match the posted 2010 route. Saw a couple cheap plastic markers that I hadn't noticed before where there are route changes, but couldn't read the second, so I'll be on the look out for those now. I hope to learn the route and make more use of it, when I'm up for visiting the few good shops up that way. According to the plot I made with Google, this H&C course is 15.4 km, which today, even with one double-back, took 1:30'09''70, which seems low, and yet I feel I should be able to improve it, or maybe I'll just have to correct it.

From there I went to La Primeur, in Nerima, which on the map I describe as having a "[l]arge variety very simple (like, elementary school Home Ec.), cheap, not particularly high-quality cakes , tarts, and other creations somewhere in between. Not my thing at all. If I still lived in this area, I might go back and try one of the fruit tarts. Note, need to order a beverage for the cafe, even when the cafe is only half full at noon on a Saturday." What I actually got was the Strawberry Millefeuille for a reasonable 410 yen. The millefeuille part sort of surrounds it, which is one strategy for making milefeuille easy to eat, although parts were still a little soggy and at its best was far from the good stuff that I've had. Mostly, this not-a-cake and not-a-tart is a way to organize whipped cream and strawberries, much like most strawberry short cake, and so would appeal to the same crowd. The custard underneath on a small biscuit base doesn't really help. It wasn't bad eating it: except for the millefeuille, the ingredient quality was fine, and even the millefeuille was only poor by comparison with other things calling themselves millefeuille, but I didn't respect it and was not thrilled with having it inside me afterward. It did mean that I did not have to buy any bread on the way (also, I was carrying about 350 kcal of homemade brownie, and ate about the same ammout of shortbread before starting out), so it served a purpose. I ran about another 18 minutes back to the park to eat it.

Expecting not the be satisfied with La Primeur, I next headed to Hidemi, although by this point it was late so they were sold out by the time I got there at 3 pm. The route is on the map. Haven't really done much running on the Shin ("new") Mejiro Road, so it felt a little weird, since I've been on bits of it and it goes through places I know or where I've run the opposite way on the opposite side of the river or highway. I got useful information from the experience, although I was kind of winging it without confidence when I left it. Took about 2:30' from the park to Hidemi.

I treated Hidemi's being sold out as a way to motivate me to keep going. It took 59'31'' running to go to Isetan and then home with cake from Sadaharu Aoki: Cassissier for the 891 yen (only, supposedly) at Shinjuku Isetan. I had to go to the 10th anniversary page to find a short Japanese description: this is cassis and chocolate. In the past, they've supposedly had Cassis Chocolat, which had cassis in white chocolate and looked the same, except for having almonds on the bottom, but no fruit. I think this also has the usual feuillantine praliné. This was great, not surprisingly.

Total running time for the day's run was about 5:27. Since I broke my one-day distance record and also already visited a great shop, I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. I need to look at routes for heading down to Jiyugaoka and check how I'm feeling in the morning.