Entry for February 03, 2007

"Igai to tanoshikatta!"

It was more fun than expected!

The Pumpkin Princess, the Pumpkin Daddy and I went to the new large suburban shopping mall about half an hour away from our apartment. It was the Pumpkin Daddy's idea. I wasn't too keen on it because I'd been hearing horror stories about the crowds and the parking space (or rather lack thereof) from people at work, but he suggested that if the parking looked too awful we could turn back and go check out housebuilder's showrooms for decorating ideas.

Parking was all right, but we ended up in the lot across the street from the mall building itself. There were about 10 parking attendants (about 7 too many) and they wouldn't let us jaywalk, and they wouldn't let us push the Pumpkin Princess's stroller up the walkway. We had to take her out, fold the stroller, and carry both it and her up the stairs. The Pumpkin Daddy was most annoyed (rightfully so, he carried the Pumpkin Princess and the stroller up the stairs) and later told me at that particlar time he thought he never wanted to come here again.

Some of the Pumpkin Daddy's co-workers had been to the mall and said that it was large and spacious and there were supposedly lots of stores that hadn't had shops in this area until now, but they'd never heard of any of them so they weren't all that impressed. The moment I got in I was squealing "Oooh, Lush (British natural cosmetics)! Oooh, Franc Franc (Japanese furniture and household items store)! Can we have Kihachi (Japanese pastry shop known for their soft serve ice cream)???" So I guess I'm more up to the newly popular stores than the Pumpkin Daddy's co-workers are. Inside the mall was...a standard issue American shopping mall. Which isn't something you see very often in this part of the country. They had a lot of cool restaurants which I would love to check out if we weren't on a tight budget right now. We are definitely going there again, probably to buy china at Franc Franc.