Friday: Jun Honma (Isetan) and racing shoes

Since the last cake from P. Jun Honma was great (although not exciting), I returned to Isetan for another piece of cake, this time Majestic for 550 yen.

The run was intended to be a short run, but I wanted to use the racing rather than thick novice shoes, which I have not used since my injury. First, I ran down to the start point of the Gaien loop course (the course has a start/end marker at the south point and 100 meter tiles, which I was not making much use of when I timed from the entry point at the northwest point): a moderate 9'03'' for 1.5 km. I did just two laps, from there, focusing on keeping my pace fast but stride short. To avoid dragging/swinging my right leg around, I tried to focus on bringing the right heel down and rolling off it. Also, I checked my time at the 500 m and 1000 m markers to make sure I was keeping my target speed. I had set up my timer to ring every 36 s but didn't use it (since the track is 1325, it would not have stayed in sync after the first lap anyway). Just two laps at a moderate speed taking 7'49''.33 and 7'46''.40 left me tired; yup, I've lost some muscle. Continuing back around before, and I thought trying less hard (but maybe that meant longer stride despite the slower pace) was 1.62 km in 9'25''24, which is actually fast; don't remember why now. So the today was 1.6 km fast and 4.1 km moderate.

The cake struck me as only good at the time, but I've downgraded that to okay later because ultimately it really made me want to have great cake, which is a bad sign. It is another chocolate mousse, this time with caramel crème brûlée. Like the orange cake, this was pretty unexciting and the basic flavors did not really add up to something worthwhile to me. Not bad or poorly made, but not something that I need. Sorry about the picture; guess the auto-focus or something failed. That's toasted puffed rice, maybe, covered in caramel, on top.

I got these last Thursday and have been trying them, just to explore what else the sweets section of Isetan has to offer. This is from the Yokohama Francais counter. I suppose should show what they look unwrapped, but I don't need three photos of them and I've only eaten one a day. The three flavors in this set, "Mille feuille", of six are chocolate, which was excellent, caramel, which was okay or good, and gianduja、which was at least good. "Gianduja" was a term I did not know for a mixture of chocolate and hazelnut. I've had what looked like chocolate but tasted like this and had not known what the weird flavor was and wondered if it had gone bad. This is the first I've finally "gotten" it. I think sometimes I mistake this taste for coffee, but the nuttiness is definitely there. This set is about 600 yen, about the price of a piece of cake, but can be stretched to six servings. Not sorry I tried it, but it's not going to replace cake in my life.