Yata

We visited New Town Plaza quite often during our trip as we were staying nearby. Yata was definitely one of my favorite department stores to browse in especially the supermarket floor. They have a huge selection of Japanese snacks, drinks and dried goods. My favorite was especially the sushi selection, which featured rows upon rows of fresh sushi for an affordable price. They also have a huge prepared foods section featuring local specialties.
Above the supermarket floor, they’ve got clothes, stationery, luggage, baby and kids’ department, as well as counters for some leading cosmetic brands.
I stopped by the Laniege counter (Korean brand) and bought myself a set of their famous water sleeping pack. Two full size bottles for about $ 50 USD plus they threw in a 10+ samples plus a set of trial sizes of their famous Water Bank line. It was a pretty good deal that I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere else even at cosmetic giants like Sasa and Bonjour.
At one of their clothing stalls, they were selling cheap clothes from a local label called Jungle Black. I like that they still support local artists and designers in such a way – they may not have their own counter within the store but they have a stall and it was placed near the escalators and registers. Most tops from that label were under $ 20 USD and they were mostly one-​size. The ladies working at that stall were super friendly and helpful, so I ended up blowing some big bucks here.

People, people and more people. That sums up Yata for you.
Its spread over 2 levels at Phase 3 of New Town Plaza– at one point one of the biggest shopping malls in Asia. Yata is a Japanese backed shopping mall and this shows through the way the store is decorated and the goods they sell– everything just seems to be nicer here. You will find major brand names here with each brand taking a little section individually and cosmetics which takes up almost half of one floor. For me though, its the huge array of baby items on offer and the supermarket which interests me.
The baby section is convenient in the sense it sells everything from prams to canned baby food. whenever I get into difficulties in locating something I will find it here. As I have said before, baby items are something as foreign as Mars to me hence this really helps me in getting the stuff I need.
The supermarket is lovely– it offers fresh meat, seafood and even cooked food which makes it a one stop shop for anyone looking to hold a BBQ or hotpot at home which I do a lot. Its not the cheapest but the quality is a cut above other hence I think it deserves the premium.

Yata is one of those really fun stores where you could literally spend a few hours there (sorry, i’m a bit of a dork). I like looking at everything and anything, so at Yata, I can go a little crazy.
Shatin is not exactly my hood, so I only come out here to visit relatives or for work occasionally. I try to stop by Yata so see what’s up. When I’m accompanying my mom when she’s seeing relatives, I usually shop around the mall while waiting for dinner and I usually (most of the time) lose track of time.
They have everything there! Even their supermarket is awesome. I love how they have all these Japanese goods, it almost feels like I am in Japan. They have such a huge selection that possibly even the Japanese would be impressed.
I also go a little crazy for cute things… and cute things they have abundance of! They have a surprisingly big selection of kitchen goods. I don’t mean normal kitchen goods that you can get at sogo or any other utensil shops, they have really cute yet (somewhat) useful things. They’ll definitely have one of everything in pink, that’s for sure. But one time, I even saw a miso measurer! It is used to measure how much miso is needed to make a pot of soup. It isn’t exactly useful until you are at home with your pot of miso and not sure how much you need.
That’s just one floor.
It’s a full on department store with clothes, travel goods, stationary, toys and all the other good things.
It’s no wonder i always lose track of time everything i think i’m just «checking it out».