Vacation - Richmond!

One of the big reasons for coming over to Vancouver was to head for Yaohan Centre -- a mall which includes the Osaka Supermarket -- a place the size of the average Safeway but carries the foods you would normally have to gather from several crowded stores along Fisgard in Victoria plus a lot of items you just can't find in Victoria. Needless to say we spent over $100 there. I also happily purchased a VCD of A Chinese Ghost Story (with subtitles) for $4.99 from a kiosk in the mall.

On our way to Yaohan, we passed another mall, Aberdeen, which is new enough (recently rebuilt in 2003) that it's neither full nor finished. We came back after Yaohan to investigate Aberdeen. In one corner of that mall there is a store called Daiso which is a GIANT (two-floor) store where every item is $2. Here's the scoop from HRDC Canada:

The mall’s anchor tenant is Daiso, the ‘Wal-Mart of Japan’, a two storey, 26,900 sq.ft. outlet with 24,000 items each sold for $2, including cosmetics, gardening tools, household goods, storage boxes, snack food and stationery. It is the first North American location for Daiso, which in Asia opens between one and two new stores per day. Since its December 12th opening, the Richmond store has broken all the company’s previous sales records. Daiso Richmond will employ approximately 150 people.

Daiso also had two aisles of "massage tools" which gave hubby and me the giggle-fits, as we discussed which ones were "beginners" and which were "advanced."

The food fairs in both malls are totally Asian -- not a french fry in sight -- and while the kid happily munched through noodles, she asked for milk to drink which proved to be an impossible task. Bonus: the servings were so big that we brought our lunch back to the hotel and had leftovers for dinner.