Croissants: Sadaharu Aoki, Fraoula, and St. Marc Cafe

Thursday, I was busy. Friday, I took the day off. Mid-day, I worked on two revised and one loop I'm adding to the neighborhood running course. I failed at the Jinguumae 5&6 loop going counterclockwise because, after stopping at the new Hotel Chocolat, I thought I needed to run farther for the turn to go by Number Sugar. Now I know. Going down to the Shibuya Stn. area to start the next loop, I got a Croissant Matcha from the Sadaharu Aoki at ShinQs. Like the plain, it was high-quality, but I thought the match was unnecessary in this case, but it was still excellent. I look forward to catching their chocolate version some time.

I was successful at the Kamiyama-chou--Tomigaya--Udagawa-chou loop counterclowise, interrupted at the north end by doing the Tomigaya--Yoyogi loop, so the latter has been reconfirmed and the former has been officially added, which is out of order, but I had to run what I had time for. Before finishing off the former, I stopped at Fraola, at got their croissant. This also was a proper pastry croissant and was definitely good, but I'm raising the bar on croissant now that I've confirmed that they can be great. They have other pastries there that I want to retry on other days, so I'm not writing them off by any means.

Saturday, I had more time for running, so I made an attempt at the Daita--... loop, but failed almost immediately on a new part near the beginning (with respect to counterclockwise), but at least could confirm the proper route. It was just as well, since I wasn't well prepared (hadn't charged my phone for a couple days). Coming back, I passed near Yoyogi-Uehara to confirm the Starbucks there and also found a Fujiya bakery nearby (on the route) and confirmed the route near where I previous failed. I can also say that at least I did the tiny Moto-Yoyogi-Chou loop correctly this time, so just counterclockwise to go. At the station, there is also a St. Marc Cafe, which I had a bad experience with several years ago, but since they have fresh pastries, I figured I should give them a try. I think they call this little thing a ChocoCroi.

My memories was that it was disgusting. Actually, though it is overly soft, the chocolate is fine so actually this is good. I thought adding this chain would disrupt a lot of loops, but actually I only have to revise two, the Kamiyama-chou--Tomigaya--Udagawa-chou loop that I had just done and the Ebisu-nishi west loop. I did have to add a couple tiny loops near two other loops because I couldn't incorporate them directly into existing loops, due to the needs of other sites. However, after returning home and having lunch, I went out by bicycle to confirm sites (and take pictures, though now Google maps is rejecting all my pictures) and found a dessert shop that's forcing a revision of the Akasaka-Roppongi loop again, which just doesn't seem to settle down. Most of my effort was confirming new loops east of Ebisu Station.