unmanned bakery

One of my favorite bakeries nearby, Alice, started something new..an unmanned bakery.

From 19:00 (which I think is their closing time), they fill these lockers with all sorts of baked goods.

You can purchase them from the lockers for 500 yen (tax included).

I think they put the items that were not able to sell in here and it is a kind of a  “surprise” as to what you will receive.

In their email, they mentioned that each locker's baked goods value was about 600 to 700 yen.

I think it is a good way to cut down on the amount of food thrown out in Japan.

I want to try to buy it just to see what’s in the locker.

Will write up about it if I get a chance to purchase it.

keiro no hi

Today is the start of Silver Week and a national holiday, Keiro no Hi (Respect for Aged Day), similar to Grandparents Day.

I've shown you my grandparents in the past and wanted to share with you this photo of my great grandparents.

Am bummed that no one in my family knows where the original photo is (it was actually more like a ceramic thing that had their photo on it) nor what their names are.

Appreciating our grandparents, great grandparents for always watching over us.

We’re keeping safe and staying close to home, have a good week.

this and that

I baked banana nut bread with the muffin mix I received from Val.

I'm glad that there was a loaf pan option on the back of the box since my oven is too small to bake 12 muffins at once.

Even though my loaf pan is non-stick, I was lazy and didn't want to grease the pan (you know, just in case the bread got stuck), so I looked online for a way to make a loaf liner.

The batter went into the crevasse where the paper is folded at the ends but otherwise, this was an easy way to fold a liner and clean up was easy too.

As for the banana nut bread, I added 2 handfuls of chocolate chips and some ground flax seed.

It is a very moist bread with all the oil that goes into it.

I'm glad we got to try this, I have most of it in the freezer and we've been enjoying slices for breakfast.

It is kinmokusei (osmanthus) season. I love this fragrance.

My Flickr friend Genie, does a Paris People on her IG stories which inspired me to do Tokyo People...she's stumbled on some rather "ahem" moments...

Proof that it has been a blazing summer...no?!

you should see my shorts line....
 

We tried this sweet potato ice cream made by Lotte for Family Mart.

So good!

Tasted like yakiimo (roasted sweet potato).

I'm glad we got to try this.

Tokyo People...this guy with all the cans is taking them illegally and can be fined.

Do you see the guy up in the tree?!

The leaves are starting to change...

Tokyo as well as the rest of Japan's case numbers are going down.

But, the severe cases as well as the deaths are quite high.

We are expecting a Typhoon Chanthu to pass over the weekend.

The typhoons of late have been weird, they start somewhere below Okinawa and start to move toward China and then "get stuck" in-between Japan and China, then the typhoon "re-groups" and moves up Kyushu and Honshu.

We've brought some things off of our lanai, but I think I may need to find space for the plants to come indoors too.

Hope you all are doing well.

Have a safe weekend.

inose

I saw somewhere that Inose sells their beef stew every Tuesday.

So, since I was in a rut as to what to eat/cook, we walked over to Zoshiki and went to check to see if Inose had their beef stew.

They did.

500 yen (tax included) for 1 serving.

I should've taken the photo before covering the whole bowl with gravy.

Underneath the gravy there is half a potato, some carrots and very tender beef.

I added some broccoli for color.

The beef stew is rich and is a demi-glace base.

I'm glad we got to try this and we'll be back to purchase this again.

shine muscat

I told you that I had ordered 2 kilos of Pizzutello Bianco...well, after the grapes arrived, my fridge was filled with the box.

Then on Wednesday Satoshi had his Zoom German class and a classmate was selling Shine Muscat grapes.

So he ordered 2 kilos...and he tells me on Friday that he ordered some!

So over the weekend we were eating the Pizzutello Biancos like krazy since we didn't know when the Shine Muscats would arrive.

I thought about freezing some of the Pizzutello grapes but since they have seeds, I thought it might be hard to eat.

Well, the box of Shine Muscat grapes arrived on Saturday night.

As V said, "what a grape problem to have"....ha!

The Shine Muscats orbs are huge! sweet and seedless.

We'll be eating these this week...

on a walk

Last Tuesday we got out and about.

It was actually cool enough, no humidity too...whoo!

We went to check out this bath house...Myojin-yu.

It is being used in a J-drama we are watching, and after looking online we realized it was about 40 minutes walking distance from where we are so we wanted to check it out IRL (in real life).

It is huge! and was built in 1957.

If I am not mistaken bath houses were made to look like temples after the war to calm people and give them hope for the future.

Satoshi says he wants to go bathe there after our COVID cases go down.

Nearby is this huge park called Higashi Chofu….

With all these fun things for kids to play on.

Even a real steam engine!

I love this house along side the rail tracks.

It looks like it is half of a barrack.

I love when the roses are blooming on their lanai.

The sunflowers in our neighborhood are huge too.

Taller than Satoshi.

This kochia plant in our neighborhood is getting huge too.

It has been overflowing out onto the roadway.

It reminded me of a caterpillar...ha!

Lunch from Hutte.

Weiner with a snap, salted butter anpan and chocolate nut scone.

13565 steps...legs felt like jelly afterwards but we were happy to be outside for a change.

this and that

Tokyo people...the traffic guy at a nearby pachinko parlor.

These guys were talking story...I was more interested in the NYPD police car parked...looks real too!

Since it is new month I bought some flowers for all the people that passed away in our lives...these sunflowers have also been brightening up the recent cloudy, rainy days.

We have been running out of ideas for lunch...dinner too for that matter.

Satoshi was happy that Kat let him drink beer on a weekday.

A sign of the season changing...Mount Fuji had some snow on top which was apparently a month earlier than last year.

All this rain has made the price of vegetables skyrocket.

As I was updating my recipe page, I think I might have erased some recipes, I hate how blogger updates soon after a change happens, I wasn't able to undo the deletion....boo!

I am a mosquito magnet…*scratch* *scratch*

Main branch of government is planning to have an election in a couple of weeks for the next Prime Minister...boo! which means all the media and the government is focused on this and not the pandemic...boo!

I hate the fact that they are not in session but will come out of “hiding” just for this...like the opposing parties said, "work on the pandemic from 9 to 5 and then you can talk about elections after those hours"...I think they should all be working on this pandemic 24-7…

Japan’s 2nd vaccine rate is only 49% and will slow down because they are running out of vaccines.

Hoping the "myu" variant from Colombia which seems to be resistant to vaccines doesn't increase in Japan especially since they've already found 2 cases...

Tokyo's numbers are still slowly going down, BUT severe cases and cases waiting for hospital beds are still high.

Hoping you all stay safe.

Have a nice weekend.