From Georgia to Brittany via Austria and Denmark, we meet with passionate craftspeople obsessed with producing better bread. Between tradition and modernity, some strive to produce excellent sourdough, others use ancestral wheat, but all aim to make the best possible bread while respecting local, ecological and sustainable production.

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Journeys around Britain by bus and train

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• The variety of places we can eat / order from with Leo is slowly increasing. He's been on a curry kick as of late, which is great as we can get veg into him easily, but we also took this chance to grab some Indian takeaway. He ate up the butter-chicken curry. I was hoping to have him try some of my mixed vegetable curry, but they only heard "mixed" when taking our order and gave me the mixed seafood curry.
• We had a company BBQ at Kasai Rinkai Park in Tokyo. The park is one stop from Disneyland (which you can see from the top of the Ferris wheel). I took Leo with me to meet my "work friends" and he was super excited. The setup is quite nice – basically if you have a reservation, you just need to show up. They have all of the BBQs, give you the charcoal, fire starters, tongs and food to grill. You just need to start the fire and grill. We let one of the Australians on the team man the barbie – it's in their blood. (yes, there were some huge shrimp included and no, I didn't ask him to "put another shrimp on the barbie", but mostly as I didn't think to do that until just now...next time).
• I went out for a couple of rides along Sakai-gawa and I'm really enjoying it. It's a bit easier now as it's cooled off a bit from the summer highs. While I enjoy riding along the river (nice scenery, no cars) it does make me wish I could incorporate more longer-ish riding into daily life. The usual way people do that is to commute by bike, but that's not feasible as the office is 50km / 3 hour ride away. I guess what I'm getting at is that it would be nice to have a destination, other than just out and back.

Japan is one of the world's biggest plastic waste producers, thanks to its love of packaging - but a week of going plastic-free in Tokyo reveals surprising solutions.

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• I met with a buddy for a couple of brews in Totsuka. A few years ago when we met for drinks in Totsuka we tried to visit Yokohama Brewing, a local beer brewer. But that time it was the day after a public holiday, so they were closed in lieu of being open on the holiday. Sunday wasn't a holiday, so they must be open. 
  
  Wrong! When we arrived there was a sign on the door, the entire staff was off because they were attending a Yokohama Baystars baseball game. Maybe next time we'll be able to have beers there, 3rd times' a charm and all.
• After wandering around a bit we found a nice Okinawan restaurant that had some tables out front so we could enjoy the cooler weather with our beer. The old lady running the joint wanted to take our photo for her Instagram story, which we obliged.
• Leo's started mimicking? role playing? me. Out of nowhere he started saying he needs a desk and a computer in his room. Fine – we have an old IKEA Lack table and that old (now working fine) Macbook Air laying about. He starts typing in the notes app and tells me to close the door because he has to work. Then he tells me to go to my office so we can work together (each in our own office though).
  
  It got me thinking – in his mind working 90% remotely is completely normal for him. The shock when he realizes that most people, especially in Japan, don't get to do that, is gonna be huge.
• However, now that Leo is "working" and pre-school is starting up he's started also saying "I'm not going to pre-school, I need to work". He does say he wants to study English while he's workig, so at least there's that. I feel like it's gonna be a long couple of weeks while we get back into the routine after a long summer break.