Rest Sunday: Seijo Alpes and Andersen

I also got bread bread, but this sweet, Chocobar (チョコバー), was 360 for the box of three, so I could not resist. Energy- and flavor-wise, it might count as three cakes, even if it is less than one cake in terms of price. Very delicious, maybe great pastry. Andersen at Isetan is maybe my favorite bakery. 

The iPod is crippled, so I dug out a ten-year old digital camera which I hope to use from now on. The bread photo was fine, but I had to take a dozen pictures and fiddle with various settings (with unfamiliar icons or Japanese) before I could get an in-focus picture of cake (I don't know what the auto-focus thought I wanted a picture of before I got it right).

After loading up on pastry energy from the bakery, I went out scouting my normal weekday running route to see where the up and down slopes are within the Yotsu neighbor west of Akasaka Palace, which is usually the first place I go to from the National Stadium. I don't have time to jog longer, so I would like to introduce more slopes (but I don't want to do laps). There was running, because time is limited, and even running with heavy groceries. Amazingly, I managed to not break anything, despite having two bottles.

After the groceryrunning (shower, laundry, and eating a vegetable), I ate the cake that I had bought at Isetan. I know I've seen Seijo Alpes before, presumably at Isetan, but I don't seem to have any records. Maybe I hated everything I tried and/or it was before I started collecting the cards. This is Brenda (?: ブレンダ), which was 460 yen. It's caramel, which is always difficult, as there is variation in the taste of caramel. This was the same caramel taste as in standard Japanese pudding, which I hate. Maybe it's not sweet enough, and that's why it has a smoky taste that makes me think of coffee (which I don't drink and actually has a definitely much worse taste that lingers on and on). Anyway, this failed for me but I won't hold that against them. I had the chocobar earlier, so I don't need to go out and get anything else. Still, I'm not sure whether I'll try to hit them at Isetan again or save them for a Saturday run, when I'm ready buy cakes from multiple shops anyway, so I can be prepared with great cake from somewhere else. Speaking of which, I need to prepare my next Saturday map (and pizza dough for tonight). Trying a place that was convenient to my normal haunts this weekend did not work out so well, but I want to try Quatre anyway. Then I've still got to get to Bigarreaux and maybe Jun Ujita, which I stopped by once and got something simple and confirmed that they are okay. After that, there are some remote ones that are coming into my running range that I might visit. I figure, as long as I start in Tokyo, it counts it's suitable for this blog (and these are places that have visited Isetan).