Invitation of Bread (Part Two!)
Jun. 25th, 2021 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingYumi is a 35-year-old housewife who decides to open a small bakery in Jiyugaoka, a suburb to the west of Tokyo. Her architect husband leaves his firm and starts working from home so that he can help take care of their ten-year-old son, Haruki.
Yumi’s cheerful and energetic best friend from high school, Chie, is an accounts manager for a restaurant supply company, where she is constantly harassed by gross older men. When Yumi goes to Chie to inquire about outfitting the bakery, she listens to Chie’s tales of woe and invites her to become her partner in the business.
Chie happily accepts the invitation, and she and Yumi open a bakery together. They decide to call their new business Pan no Kangei, which means something like “the warm sense of welcome you feel when a restaurant offers you freshly baked bread” but is officially translated as “Invitation of Bread.”
An upperclassman whom Yumi and Chie admired in high school, Sakamoto-san, works in the editorial department of a lifestyle magazine, and she visits the bakery to write an article. Sakamoto-san is beautiful and intelligent, but she is unhappy at her job because she feels as though the long hours she puts into writing for the magazine don’t leave her time for the creative work she always dreamed of doing. Yumi and Chie invite her to be the third partner in the business, so she leaves her corporate job and takes on the task of managing the bakery’s branding and social media accounts while working out her surprisingly violent frustrations on the bread dough every morning.
In every episode, Yumi and her friends try their hand at creating a new menu item, but they sometimes have trouble getting it right. They’re aided by a German sports reporter named Lars who lives in the neighborhood. While taking his Golden Retriever Lola out on walks, Lars visits the bakery and encourages the three women by telling them stories about the origins of various European pastries.
In the second half of the season, the bakery takes on a high school student named Momoka as a part-time worker. Momoka is the older sister of one of Hakuri’s friends, and she’s a video game otaku who has trouble talking with people. Yumi was also shy as a teenager, so she sympathizes. She invites Momoka to spend a few afternoons helping out at the bakery after school, and Momoka’s fantasies of heroes and monsters end up serving as the inspirations for several new confections.
Although the Pan no Kangei bakery gets off to a somewhat rocky start, by the end of the season it has become a neighborhood favorite, as well as a space for Yumi, Chie, and Sakamoto-san to reignite their high school friendship and rediscover the joy of the dreams they had when they were younger.
Yumi’s cheerful and energetic best friend from high school, Chie, is an accounts manager for a restaurant supply company, where she is constantly harassed by gross older men. When Yumi goes to Chie to inquire about outfitting the bakery, she listens to Chie’s tales of woe and invites her to become her partner in the business.
Chie happily accepts the invitation, and she and Yumi open a bakery together. They decide to call their new business Pan no Kangei, which means something like “the warm sense of welcome you feel when a restaurant offers you freshly baked bread” but is officially translated as “Invitation of Bread.”
An upperclassman whom Yumi and Chie admired in high school, Sakamoto-san, works in the editorial department of a lifestyle magazine, and she visits the bakery to write an article. Sakamoto-san is beautiful and intelligent, but she is unhappy at her job because she feels as though the long hours she puts into writing for the magazine don’t leave her time for the creative work she always dreamed of doing. Yumi and Chie invite her to be the third partner in the business, so she leaves her corporate job and takes on the task of managing the bakery’s branding and social media accounts while working out her surprisingly violent frustrations on the bread dough every morning.
In every episode, Yumi and her friends try their hand at creating a new menu item, but they sometimes have trouble getting it right. They’re aided by a German sports reporter named Lars who lives in the neighborhood. While taking his Golden Retriever Lola out on walks, Lars visits the bakery and encourages the three women by telling them stories about the origins of various European pastries.
In the second half of the season, the bakery takes on a high school student named Momoka as a part-time worker. Momoka is the older sister of one of Hakuri’s friends, and she’s a video game otaku who has trouble talking with people. Yumi was also shy as a teenager, so she sympathizes. She invites Momoka to spend a few afternoons helping out at the bakery after school, and Momoka’s fantasies of heroes and monsters end up serving as the inspirations for several new confections.
Although the Pan no Kangei bakery gets off to a somewhat rocky start, by the end of the season it has become a neighborhood favorite, as well as a space for Yumi, Chie, and Sakamoto-san to reignite their high school friendship and rediscover the joy of the dreams they had when they were younger.
