Yaohan Next Age BaBaiBan and Roberto Cavalli for H&M

(to make up for lack of photos in a lot of my previous posts there is a bit of a photo overload in this entry!)




Well I went to Yaohan Next Age today and was pretty disappointed. For the supposedly second biggest department store in the world and largest in Asia it didn't seem that big nor exciting. The cosmetics and kids areas were great but the others were pretty blah. I went into the stationery section hoping to find some nice stuff but after being in Japan I was of course sorely disappointed. It was about as boring as stationery in Australia 10 years ago. Bland. Manly. Blue, black, grey, plain. No bright colours, no cutesy cartoony figures.. I will say though that I found glue tape there though. I have been looking for it everywhere in Shanghai to no avail. I bought 2 of them in Japan. I hate how other types of glue warp the paper and don't stick that well. The saleslady said to me, "You do know that is glue and not correction tape?" and I was thinking, "Uh..yeah... because correction tape is everywhere and I have searched high and low to find this!!" It had Japanese packaging and said Made in Vietnam. The one I bought in Japan was made in China. Weird.

To get some more of my Japanese 'fix' I went to a Japanese restaurant in the top of that building and it was pretty good. For 40 yuan I got a set meal, didn't even finish it all and was totally stuffed. The noodles were fantastic, as was the tempura but they gave me some eggnog type thing with a prawn in it and I thought that was totally gross. The tea was nice though and the salad was OK too. The funniest thing I noticed was that the lady standing at the front of the restaurant was wearing a kimono, socks and sandals. However, she didn't have the proper Japanese tabi socks and had normal socks. You can't wear normal socks with those thong/flip flop sandal things! Haha.




After being disappointed I decided to go to the Super Brand Mall. On the way there I took some photos of the Pearl Tower and construction workers near the station. The Pearl Tower never ceases to amaze me. You have no idea how big it is looking at a photo. You really need to see it for yourself to see how mammoth it is! I was quite impressed and shocked at the station's interior - it was pristine and almost empty! What was going on? Was I really back in Shanghai?









Then I caught a train to Zhongshan Park and went into H&M (even though I had already gone into the one in Super Brand/Pudong, but didn't really look at anything). I looked at an interesting looking black trench coat and then looked at the tag and realised it was part of the long awaited Roberto Cavalli collection!

I got so excited about taking photos that I actually stopped looking at the clothes. Not sure if I like them or not. They are all either black, gold, or animal print. The dresses all come in their own sheer gauzy organza type fabric bag which was nice and different. The pieces are fairly reasonably priced, I think. The stupid security guard wouldn't let me take any photos but I got some.







There are some better ones up on Flickr too.