Osan E-mart Shopping Trip

Our Osan E-mart shopping trip in captions:

My shopping buddies: Cooper and our friend Aimee that took us out for the morning shopping trip. Aimee's only been in Korea for about a year and a half but is a driving and shopping pro and has been teaching me some great tips about living in the ROK!

You have to rent your carts for 100 won (about 10 cents).
They are much more narrow than typical American carts.

The carts have special wheels that attach to the escalator floor and holds it into place. The wheels also go forward/backward and side to side which make turning corners a little squirrel-y.

The special escalator took us to each of the 3 floors with advertising lining the escalator walls.

Actually, there is advertising in droves here.
Often times the English translation is really interesting!

The top floor of the E-mart was stationery, toys, kid's clothes, beauty supplies and accessories. The stationery is so fun and another place to find some really funny translations to English.

 The second floor was housewares including cooking supplies, decor, appliances and more. I picked up some trainer chopsticks with the very famous Korean cartoon character - Pororo. Even in Korean this little penguin character is adorable - watch an episode here! 

Right off the escalator to the bottom floor was this row of candy/toy machines. Just like most things seem to be here in Korea, there were many, in a compact space in perfect little rows.
  

The bottom floor was the most fun - grocery! You could spend hours just looking at the packaging and the interesting things to look at. Just like in America packaging sells me on most things. Here's a shot of Korean organic baby food.

I'm a well-documented sushi addict. The E-mart had a beautiful display of individually wrapped and priced sushi. 

You can create your own custom takeout box of sushi - I chose a selection of very safe fish and one that looked like harmless green roe. I only opened the package a smidge' when the smell hit me - wasn't feeling adventurous enough to try it so straight to the trash it went! Another day perhaps.

I also picked up some great-looking sprouts in produce. I love bean sprouts and they have such a selection here. This bibimbap (my favorite Korean dish) pack had four different kinds of sprouts with four distinct flavors. Yum!

I had no idea what this was when I bought it but I liked the packaging. Not bad. Something similar to an animal cracker but I've seen these displayed with more savory foods as well. The package to the right is what I'm assuming is the equivalent of the keep-fresh DO NOT EAT packages in American products.

I was sold again on packaging. This looked like it could be good although Aimee warned me that bean curd is mistaken for chocoloate a lot so you have to take your chances. It turned out to be filled with something similar to chocolate although much less sweet and more paste-like. The breading was similar to a twinkie but also less sweet.

Here are the few things that I purchased in grocery including the pseudo-twinkies, animal crackers, sprouts, and sushi. I also purchased some thin cappuccino wafters that were really pretty good, some bread that was filled with some type of semi-sweet cream, and some wonderful sesame dressing that Aimee recommended. 

Cooper shopped 'till he dropped. Time to head home!