You need not be a Yakitate!! Japan fan to apply. It would help of course, if you love bread =P

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the one anime craze that’s been sweeping through my (usually) non-otaku dormmates, and that is Yakitate!! Japan. Yes, that ludicrously entertaining show about baking bread that stretches and kneads the limits of logic to give us some freshly baked wholesome lulz. That show that for some time I could not stop hearing said doormates talk about how awesomely hilarious it is while they try to mimick the killer reactions brought on by the bread in the show, while I simply nod in the background thinking “Crap, has it really been that long ago since I’ve watched it?”.

Err, anyways, said bunch of overenthusiastic sudden fans friends decided it’d be a great idea to go check out this place called Pan no Mimi in Kyoto, which is cited in Wikipedia as where Yakitate’s ‘outrageous’ bread actually came from in real life (*gasps art imitating life???*). Cut out the boring parts like last minute ‘planning’ (i.e. checking train schedules in the middle of the night/morning before -_-”) and we managed to find the place on the sweltering hot Saturday we chose to go. Yay!

Sadly, it wasn’t the smell of freshly baked bread that actually lead us there, because, contrary to the information in Wikipedia, the place we found wasn’t actually a bakery, it was really a ‘bread baking learning centre’. Which wasn’t open when we reached there. And even if it was, we’d have to fork out about 2000-3000yen to be educated in the fine art of bread before we get to eat any. And being as hungry and hot and sweaty (Solar Gauntlets!!) as we were, after confirming through a phone call that there really isn’t a Pan no Mimi bakery and snapping photos of the store front, we just headed off elsewhere.

(Before you ask, no we did not end up at Kyoto Animation. None of said non-otaku dormmates have started worshiping Haruhi as of yet)

‘Elsewhere’ is really the best word to describe it. Basically we walked all the way to the next big train station for the lack of an actual destination in mind. Along the way, to assuage our ‘disappointment’, we practically stopped in every bakery we stumbled upon, lol. I would’ve picked up the pictured panda bread, but it somehow made me feel ‘cannibalistic‘. Had this cheesecake bread instead (seriously, whoever thought of putting cheesebread in a puff pastry-like bread, you are a GENIUS).

And to top it off, instead of having dinner, we decided to go for ice-cream parfaits (can you say suuuUUUUGGARRRR RUSSHHHHHHH????). Well we intended to find this place our friend last went to with his senpais that supposedly served huge-assed parfaits… But since we couldn’t relocate the place, we just settled on a different place which served ‘normal’ sized ones. Was perfectly happy with this (sorry no pictures of me digging in because, duh, I was too busy stuffing my face)… Until wandering outside after that, we actually stumbled upon the very shop we had wanted to go to! And sweet mother of dessert, like my friend said, them parfaits are HUUUGEEE (the pic doesn’t do them justice. The top one is at least the size of a whole watermelon). God, if we had eaten there instead, I think I’d have died and gone to ‘heaven’ like that episode of Chocolate Underground Yakitate! Instead we settle with snapping more pics and pretending we didn’t understand moonspeak when we were asked to take a seat… DAMNIT I SWEAR I WILL RETURN THERE!!!!

Oh it’s 10. Well, that’s about it about last Saturday I suppose, I’ve got to go catch Seigi no Mikata now XD