39 km loop:

Tried just dipping into Kanagawa pref., looking to see whether I should expand again outside of Tokyo. The detour at Shibuya Sta. was was much more than I intended, although I liked the south part of it and should use that again. Shibuya is not just runner friendly, which is why I don't usually go there for cake. Since I'm not trying to find the shortest route, I should stick to detouring around it more fully.

WIth the detour, the run to Bigarreaux was about 13 km, which took an acceptable 80 minutes. Because I was doing a loop stopping for cake and exploring new roads, I was not trying to do maximum speed, although I still tried to time myself, to stay motivated. Total was about 39 km at the same pace (4 hours total), although I was definitely slow at the end. For a faster run, I need less stuff in my backpack or no backpack. It's more a problem of bulk making it press against my back than weight. I could wear the jacket (I'm still running in my same super cool UV protection shirt, although I get watery eyes rather than so much sweat. No special skin problems except for burning eyes and dried out feet). At least for today, my back was the weak link for increasing my speed.

At Bigarreaux, they've got three autumn cakes out, so I'll need to get back there again. This time, I got the Misérable for 500 yen. This is said to be a traditional Belgian cake of fermented butter cream sandwiched between high-almond-content cake. It's not that sweet, but, as you can see, that's a lot of butter. It's the kind of thing that I like very much, for variety, but can't really say that it is great. Would definitely like to have it again.

So, the entrance to Kanagawa is still not my favorite, although I was not the only runner or cyclist on the two-lane road on the Kanagawa side coming from Futakotamagawa, and it was okay, as far as I went on it. I liked the canal route that I took for the south end of the run. Google is wrong about the need to detour to cross the big expressway: there are crosswalks and lights right at the canal roads. My problem was getting off and making my way back to Tokyo. So I can use the canal route to move east-west (if I don't need to be very deep in Kanagawa), but I still need to find a good entrance point and initial road.

Coming back, I stopped by (Patisserie) de Bon Coeur in Koyama (Shinagawa dist.). They have a cafe downstairs, I think, but there is a regular moderately sized adult, fancy cake counter. I got the Gateau Pistache (guessed spelling) for 648 yen. This is pistacio and raspberries. Fairly standard cake. It was very good. Can't say that it reached great, but there's a lot of competition in this category, so it's hard to stand out. There are several parks around and it's close to one of the History and Culture Walking Courses, so maybe I'll get back there again, but I'm not going to make it a priority. I have enough other places to keep me interested. I'll update the map to reflect that I've been there.