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.

Yaohan, Best Denki and Singing Aeon (and Jusco)

It's amazing when you travel to a new place you learn more and more and sooner or later the jigsaw pieces begin to fit together. I experienced this so many times in Shanghai already.

Whilst we were in Naha Mike was sick with a cold and we desperately needed a cable or card reader for me to upload my photos and clear the SD card, and a plug adaptor thing.

I went to the busiest street in Naha thinking I could find this but the only thing they sold were souvenirs and trinkets. I then wandered into a department store thinking I could find it there but nope. I went up to the first person I came across who was a beautiful short lady working in one of those cosmetics counters. She didn't know a word of English and I barely knew a word of Japanese. I pointed to the slot on my camera and mimed a long object and said "USB cable". She took me to a Fuji photo place nearby and they didn't know where to get one either. She then took me back to the department store and came to the conclusion I could get it from a store called Jusco. Since our hotel was near the monorail station it was only a convenient 3 stop trip too.

So I stopped at a nearby eatery to bring Mike back some lunch, had a rest for about an hour and then set off again. Prior to going out I asked at the hotel front desk and they suggested I go to a store called "Best Denki" or as they say "be-su-to den-ki". She said I had to take a short taxi ride to get there.

Not having a clue what Jusco OR Best Denki sold, I looked them both up on Google on the hotel's free internet computers. I came to the conclusion that Jusco was a general store like Kmart and Best Denki was a sole electronics store. It was a hard choice to choose which one to go to but in the end I decided on Jusco simply because it was easier to get there and I could look at other stuff too (like groceries or clothes).

So I went to this Jusco and was in absolute heaven. It was similar to Carrefour in Shanghai in that it sold general household goods and had a big supermarket attached.

It sold everything under the sun for a reasonable price and it was all just so beautiful, sparkly, cute and perfect.

It turned out that only the supermarket was called Jusco and the budget department store was called Singing Aeon and had musical notes as the logo.

So where is all this leading?

Well, I am still wishing I was in Japan and pining for anything Japanese. I did a quick search on Google and it seems that there is a Yaohan store in Pudong. So I go to wikipedia and look up Yaohan.

It turns out that is it no longer called Yaohan in Japan and was bought out by the Aeon group, ie Singing Aeon. As well as that, Yaohan had an electronics store called Yaohan Best which started in Singapore and is now called..... (drum roll)... Best Denki.

So it turns out that no matter if I went to Jusco/Aeon or Best Denki to buy the cable and plug adapter it was actually the same company all along!!

Just some random trivia I found about Yaohan Next Age in Shanghai - it is the second largest department store in the world, surpassed only by Macy's in New York :)