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.