Novel Place, TianYaoQiao Lu, XuJiaHui

On 21st November, last Wednesday I went to Xujiahui. I wanted to check out the City shop there. However, I had no idea where it was apart from the fact that it was on Tianyaoqiao Lu. I found it soon enough and found myself in a brand new Western orientated shopping complex called "Novel Place." In the underground level are lots of nice restaurants including Blue Frog (all over Shanghai), and Baby Doll (another one in Raffles City), and the American chain Applebees.







First of all I went to the City supermarket and spent ages there. This one is bigger than the one in Times Square. I also spent ages browsing the books they had there. Decided to buy two: "Bound feet and Western dress" by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang and "Chinglish", a hilarious photo book by Oliver Lutz Radtke. It's been so long since I've read a book and I hate fiction so this biography seemed perfect for me. :) The second one... just because I 'collect' weird books like this!





I also bought some delicious orange-jam-filled chocolate-covered biscuits known as "Jaffa cakes" in England and Australia but these were called "Soft Cake" and were made in Germany. I ate 1/3 box when I got home (oops!)

The best part was I got them to deliver all my stuff to me for free! Yay! So then I was free to peruse XJH without having to carry 2-3kg of groceries.

I then had lunch in Kissho of Tokyo. I don't know why I went there other than I was hungry and went to the first place I saw and I like Japanese. DO NOT GO THERE! That place was an absolute joke and I very rarely have anything bad to say about any restaurant I've been to here. First of all, it was reasonably empty and those that were there had teppanyaki or sushi train so in effect they were only cooking for me. I had to wait 15 mins for my meal. Given it was so quiet this was really unacceptable to me. Second of all, all the plates looked dirty. Thirdly there was an eyelash in my soup, and there seemed to bit bits of fluff (like you get on clothing or fabrics) INSIDE my tempura. OMG. Sickening. I know I should've complained but I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I ate a little bit so I wasn't hungry but certainly didn't finish it all given how gross I felt. YUCK.

This picture is exciting because it's what I believe to be my first (and only) Christmas-decorated building related sighting!! It's the Pacific department store.



This is just a random picture I thought which looked quite nice and almost un-China-ish! :D