Oita Shopping

As part of Amy's tenth birthday present I took her shopping, just her and Mum, out of town, to the big mall! She was so excited, and felt very special, getting Mum all to herself AND getting to choose her own things to buy.

We started out at Wasada Town, Tokiwa department store mall, where there was absolutely nothing for her! I, however, scored big in a sale, nabbing these sunglasses (which Amy is just trying on) for 1000 yen, plus a big floppy white straw hat for 1000 yen, a new black leather bag discounted to 3,000 from 8,000, and some Lancome Tresor perfume for only 2000. I also got Amy some perfume, poor thing, HER shopping day, and she's sitting to the side, while Mummy tries on dozens of pairs of sunglasses!



Then we went for lunch, along with a new AFWJ club member who lives in Oita. We went to an Italian place and had a floppy pizza, and a huge salad. Friend took this photo of happy mum and kid.

After that we gave up on Wasada as just not having what we wanted! It's quite hard to find clothes in her size - there's mountains of kids' clothes, but most of the kids' stores only go up to a size 120-130, whereas Amy is at least a 140. And the women's sizes seem to start at 150-160. There were also NO shoes - she's already out of kids' shoes in Japan, I have to buy her women's shoes, so of course it's hard finding kid-friendly ones that don't have too much of a heel. I knew there was a baby Gap at Park Place, so off we went, for the Great Shopping Mall Trip, second attempt:

A cool fountain Amy wanted me to take a photo of:


Here's what we found at Gap: a sparkly blue spaghetti strap dress for 6,800 and matching cardigan for 4,800:


For shoes we found some lovely LOW-heeled black strappy espadrilles:


and I also picked up these fabulous Cinderella shoes for 500 yen for the dress-up box!



Me and coffee. We hit the cafe for cake after our hard work shopping. We also picked up a present for Grandma! (sorry STILL haven't sent it!) and a Lucky Bag of hair accessories. These work well for us - three long-haired girls and a toddler, someone's bound to like what's in there!

Then suddenly some belly-dancers appeared. It was a strange sight indeed to see a line of belly-dancing Japanese women suddenly sashay out of a store towards the pond. We stayed to watch a bit of the dancing, they were lovely: