Vacation Recap + Kawaii Haul

I just got back from a short vacation with my partner to New Jersey where I had a great time, and while there I did a considerable amount of kawaii shopping! So let’s take a dive into a recap of my vacation and check out my haul from Daiso, Artbox, Hmart, and more!

On Friday we made our 4 hour drive to NJ and our first stop was to H Mart in Ridgefield. This is my favorite H Mart as it is very large and there are many other shops within.

We ate a delicious lunch at the Korean style food court in H Mart (Food Avenue). I had soondae guk (Korean Sausage Soup 순대국) and my partner had ddeokbokki (Korean spicy rice cakes 떡볶이). Both rocked! Then we went to my favorite shop in this H Mart. It used to be called Morning Glory and was a kpop, stationary, and accessories shop I once spent $320 in in 2012. These days the shop is called “New Character House” and it’s the exact same concept. I got a bunch of cute goodies in here and my partner bought me a rilakkuma cork board for my office. After that we went into the actual grocery store part of H Mart and got Korean snacks and grocery items.

old photo of “morning glory” from 2012

Later that day we went to Daiso in Edgewater and I got a ton of stuff there. They currently have a bunch of Sanrio things and a lot of rilakkuma so I stocked up. Right next door was Little Japan USA. They had a giant rilakkuma plush the size of a ten-year-old but it was $1500 so I obviously didn’t get it. I also didn’t have room in my small car for something like that. The prices here were kinda high so I only got stickers for my friend and then we left. Right down the street we got bubble tea at Umacha. I wanted to go here because they have an outdoor seating deck directly on the Hudson River that looks right across at Manhattan. Very picturesque. I had a brown sugar milk tea and it was delicious

After our shopping we had a very expensive and amazing dinner at Keo Ku Korean BBQ. We got samgyupsal (Korean pork belly BBQ 삼겹살). My phone was dying so I didn’t get any pictures but it was awesome. It was my partner’s first time having this meal and it is my absolute favorite food. I ended up getting a samgyupsal magnet to commemorate our trip.

The next day we didn’t do any shopping but we did go to the beach and run all around NYC getting dinner and seeing the Empire State Building. We walked 6.5 miles that day and I’m still sore from it.

We spent the day at Wildwood Beach in South Jersey. It was a gorgeous day and the beach is the nicest beach I have ever been to. Highly recommend. We had to go to NYC because we wanted to try the famous Papaya King hot dogs. Papaya King is one of the oldest restaurants in Manhattan and is famed for its hot dog and papaya juice combo. The entire block where their restaurant has stood for almost 100 years was recently bought out by a luxury apartment company and is set to be razed in the near future. Whether or not the restaurant will relocate is unknown so we needed to go while we still had a chance. And I am happy to report that is SLAPPED.

Sunday, in order to pass time before our lunch spot opened up we went to the H Mart in Little Ferry because I saw on Google Maps that they have an Artbox! Artbox is a shop I used to love to hit up in Korea so I was shocked to see there’s one in the states now. So we went to Artbox and I got more cute stuff there, mostly office supplies. We got more snacks at the H Mart and they had a Daiso attached that was bigger than the one in Edgewater so we went in there too. However, I forgot about the Bergen County blue laws so half of the store was not available for shopping due to Sunday restrictions. But I did get some rilakkuma stuff that was sold out at the other H Mart so I was happy nonetheless. Afterwards we went to our desired lunch spot, Kimchi Smoke. A Korean Tex Mex place in Westwood, NJ. It was amazing. Very delicious and we got a bottle of their BBQ sauce to take home.

So here is my final haul! Everything I got while on vacation that is cute 🥰

I broke stuff down into categories for better viewing:

And the snacks we got! Happy I finally found the new melon Calpico! We got this durian mochi to try and honestly it’s not great, wouldn’t buy again but I kinda knew what I was getting myself into with that one. The Taiwanese papaya milk is really good. (can you tell I am obsessed with papaya now?)

That is all! My vacation and all the shopping and eating I did. I had a really good time and enjoyed every place I went to. I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip. I am working on a Lolita on the Go travel guide for NJ so stay tuned for that resource of cute places to check out when visiting New Jersey!