Sadaharu Aoki: Mille-feuille Vanille

Today, I ran down to Tokyo Midtown, at a 2-min running, 1-min walking, 7-8 min/km pace. My goal was to get a new flavor of kouign amann at Henri le Roux, but no change. I'll try again in a couple weeks, since I don't know their schedule. Instead, I got the Mille-feuille Vanille from Sadaharu Aoki, since I can't get it at Isetan. It's not cheap, of course, being 780 yen, and it was not really that great. It was good. It's three layers of pastry and two layers of pastry cream with no fruit. There were also pastry flakes on the side, but that's okay. The top was a hard caramel, whereas I would prefer something softer, but it doesn't make it that much more difficult to eat than it already is. As I said, it was good, but not better than that, so I am dropping them from my Great Shop list, which is down to just five: Henri le Roux, which is perfectly safe because they always have the same four cakes; Frédéric Cassel, which is one good cake from dropping off, though I've never had anything that wasn't at least excellent, but I'll want another great cake eventually to keep them; Paris S'éveille, which is in a better position as far as number of great cakes, if not physically convenient; Dalloyau, which is better on both counts; and finally Jean-Paul Hévin, which is really the one to beat and has always been my favorite.

Running was okay, but the leg is not perfect (although much better than the arm, which is the limiting factor still even in running), so I'll stick to the schedule. I got 19 km this week, 2 km at a faster 6'10'' to 7'/km pace, so next week (starting tomorrow), I want 27 km, 6 km of the faster pace. I'll also switch to about 4-min running and 1-min walking