Cake-off: Toshi Yoroizuka's Cassis over Bien-être's Chocolat Cuit

Friday, I did a local run to add the Minami-Aoyama 3&4 loop, which requires using subway access stairs to cross the road. Since the area is completely surrounded by other neighborhood loops, I'm allowing it, though I think I'll keep expanding elsewhere without using the subway accesses for now. I'll need some more practice or that loop, but it's pretty simple, so it shouldn't take much. I stopped at Breadworks again, this time for a pastry. There aren't a lot of choices in that category, but they had a Whole Wheat Croissant. It was good, but definitely whole wheat while being a real pastry (not just ordinary bread shaped like a croissant), with flaky layers. Other options on this course are a chocolate place that isn't cheap, a couple cake shops, and a bakery café next to one of the subway entrances. I'm counting this run as a one-way neighborhood run, though I couldn't use the normal course, as they have the pedestrian bridges over Omotesandou blocked off at night to keep people from going up there to take photographs of the street. People are always doing that any time of the day and year, but now there is an illumination display along Omotesandou, so they could get dangerously crowded.

Saturday, was cake-off day. My morning appointment was canceled, but I didn't leave so early and collected half a dozen photos on the way for neighborhood sites leading to Pâtisserie l'abricotier (which could ultimately be on the course, if it ever extends that far). Unfortunately, even arriving 1 hour after opening was too soon by an hour to get what I wanted, so I need to go back at noon, maybe Sunday next weekend, though I've got some appointments that might make a cake-off difficult. So I used my back-up, Bien-être, which would be another 6 km, but I practiced some neighborhood loops (where I didn't need photographs), and it was farther. No trouble getting Chocolat Cuit. From there, I ran a little but mostly walked to Tokyo Midtown to get the main goal, Cassis from Toshi Yoroizuka. The walking was partially to project my cake but partially because my right foot wasn't so great (fine now). I haven't been having trouble when not running, and have gotten lax about stretching. I'll try to do better tonight and tomorrow. I came back by train with too cakes, though that still involved more than 1 km walking (since I wasn't willing to do transfers, especially not to different lines).

I'm happy to report that I definitely still think both these cakes are great. I couldn't say that one was better than the other eating them, so I'm giving the win to Toshi Yoroizuka, because its has the most fig of cakes in cake-offs and there are lots of versions of chocolate cake (though none like this one, so I could justify either). Another excuse is that Toshi Yoroizuka ranks lower, so it needs the support more.