Adventure-Adjacent

 I'm going to count this as an adventure day, since we drove all the way out to Jersey Gardens Mall. There's a bunch of unique shopping spots there, so I got pictures to share.

On the weekends, you can't park on this side of the mall. All the spots are full and there are dozens of people circling to grab the spots if they can. It's amazing how so many people don't realize that the other side of the mall has literally hundreds of empty spots. Since I came here on a random weekday, it's no problem parking over here.

There's a few Japanese merchandise stores in this mall, this one had an arcade claw machine in it. Check out that adorable piggie with the frog costume! Sooo cute! I tried a couple of dollars to get it, but it did the "bounce-out" both times. That's when the claw grabs it, but when it gets pulled up, it pops right back out. It makes you think you can win, but my experience tells me it's totally not going to ever get it. It's painful to walk away, especially since that thing was so cute.

That store had a wall full of adorable plushies. Can you see it? Yep, they had that frog-suited, avacado smoothie-drinking piggie, right there on the shelf! Why bother with the claw machine? I could spend 13 more tries to grab it, or guarantee have it. Was the store calling my bluff? Did I really want one now?

Pick-a-Brick wall at the Lego Store had these cart things, wheels and all. Fill up a cup with as many as you can fit! I'm not sure why I passed on it, thinking back, it might have been a lot of fun to make a ton of carts.

Robots can now make cotton candy! Just the type of thing to take a video of and post it to the Internet. I wonder where I got that idea from?

Woo! Disney Outlet Store! They closed all of them everywhere, except only a few survived. Here's one of 'em!

Nice Snow White art piece. I don't have anywhere to put it, so I'll just grab a picture and put it up on the blog. I guess I did have somewhere to put it after all!

High-quality expensive dolls behind the counter. A lot of people get excited over these so I thought I should get a picture of them. Check out Elsa and Anna with the happy anime smile-eyes. Cute!

Cool to see a newly-superstar droid R5-D4 figure, oddly in a set where regular-superstar droid R2-D2 should have been. You might not remember, but R5-D4 was in the first Star Wars movie and was almost bought by Luke Skywalker instead of R2-D2. They recently featured R5 in the latest season of The Mandalorian, so he got some adventure after all.

Sleepy Chip and Dale plushies! With the little bag clips, so you can carry them around, forever postponing the naps they seem desperate to take.

Oh yeah, we are totally getting that Dale over there. He doesn't look quite as tired as the plushies did, so maybe he's up for a little bit of adventure.

One of the Japanese merchandise stores has a corner with the capsule machines. Why are the flashing lights so soothing? There's some pretty weird stuff in these things, so zoom in and wonder... why bugs?

Not-Elsa riding a three-wheeler with um... wings? Looks like she's having fun, whatever.

These giant anime figures are Rem and Ram from a show called Re:Zero. I see these characters a lot but have no idea what the show is about. If they are good enough to have giant statues of, it's for sure got to be an amazing show, right? I have to make an effort to check it out some time.

Among all of the blind-box figures, there's some on display in little cases. This Hermione cat is the cutest! The boxes for this set was $16 each. Can I just buy this one on display? I dread the thought of buying a lot of these to get this one specific figure, I mean, it's right there!

Like the Harry Potter set, it's not just all anime and art pieces. Here's a blind box set for F.R.I.E.N.D.S. could they BE more adorable?

Gotta love Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure. That guy's name is Weather Forecast. That's not any kind of nickname or codename, his name is just Weather Forecast, and he's one of the main characters in his season. Could be worse, his name could be Speedwagon, that guy was in a few seasons.

Shin Chan! This show is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. It's got a reputation of having an English dub that is actually more funny than the original Japanese dialogue. Not that I can understand the Japanese version, it's just what I've heard.

We did score that Hermione! We asked if we could buy it, and they said we could buy a random box and swap it, if it wasn't her. We wound up with a slug-burping Ron Weasley, gross! Since they didn't have the matching collector card for Kitty Hermione, they let us keep the Ron one. It's cool, it just adds to the story. And we did go back and buy one of the piggies. It was too cute to pass up, with another matching story of the claw machine. And we picked up a random not-Lego that was on sale, too.

The Ikea store is near the mall, so we usually go there as part of the adventure day. This whole place is just as much an adventure as it is a furniture store. Ever get lost in a store? You will if it's your first time in an Ikea.

I could have taken a ton of full-room pictures, but I'm in a lazy mood, so not as many as I could have taken.

That telescoping hanging lamp thing looks like it would be neat, but I bet in reality, you'd hit your head on it a bunch.

It's a variable-height desk! You turn this crank, and it goes up or down very slowly. Get it exactly how high you want it. It's the desk of the future! I hope the engineer who figured this out is getting their fair praises.

I saw this giant space filled with tables and chairs and had a fun thought of some giant dinner party going on in the store. Could I get more bread over here?

I'm not sure if this picture shows it, but these backpacks were huge. I don't really need one, but I wanted to get one anyway. $54 was a little above my impulse-purchase amount, so I passed. 

When you are done being a Jedi, you can use your lightsaber as a lamp! Brilliant! Literally and metaphorically.

Rock on, hand! No I didn't do that, it was like that when we walked by. I'm not sure what those characters are doing. Basketball maybe?

The small restaurant counter near the exit was under renovation. Looks like they are adding a seating area. 

It was neat seeing the upgrade, but this also means I won't be getting a tasty, inexpensive ice cream cone either. D'oh! I was kind of in the mood for some ice cream, too. Eh, what are you going to do? I don't get upset about this type of thing like I used to. No big deal.

They did have the dill mustard sauce I like. It's mostly dill, just a tiny bit mustard. The checkout guy kept trying to tell me how amazing it was on lobster meatballs, even after I told him about my friend's aversion to seafood of any kind, and our insistence of using this for salami sandwiches, he kept trying to suggest the lobster balls. Yeah, pretty sure we are NOT going to try that.

As we were leaving, I hear the noise and remember we forgot to take a picture of the massive airport across the street. I got a plane taking off. The Ikea has a restaurant on the second floor and you can get a good show while you eat watching the planes.

On the way back, we usually hit the Menlo Park Mall, too. It's another fairly big mall with a few unique stores. More adventure!

Autographed POP! Figures! Kinda neat, but I think I'd prefer to have the matching story of meeting the celebrity, too. 

Itsa Jar Jar Binks! Dats da character that almost ruined Star Wars! According to some people. I personally always liked him, for the record. They recently gave Jar Jar a bit of props when the actor got a cameo in a flashback scene in The Mandalorian, playng a different role. I won't spoil it for you, but he was a pretty epically cool guy in that episode.

This store has glass cases that's very hard to get non-reflective pictures of. These are classic first-generation Transformers, if you can see them.

Most people don't know there was a story bit where Bumblebee gets an upgrade with a gold paint scheme and is re-named Goldbug. So this is like a grown-up, cooler Bumblebee.

Dungeons & Dragons figures! My friend had the evil wizard guy on the left, but doesn't recognize any of these other ones. The fact that there's a big package above them might mean these are a re-release, so these might not be as old and rare as you'd think. Most people from that era opened up the figures and actually played with them.

The Rainforest Cafe is still here! I wasn't hungry, but I do like walking around the gift shop and peeking into the restaurant.

The gift shop was very not-impressive. They usually have a bunch of funny t-shirts and nature themed stuff, but no shirts at all and I couldn't be excited enough about anything else to get any pictures. So instead I got a picture of the empty bar area. It's still a cool-looking place even without the cool merchandise.