Garden 5

I came across this commercial with Jang Keun Suk 張根碩 and Park Shin Hye in it...

As I was watching this commercial...

I thought... Garden 5?

Sounds familiar...

Then, the light ball went off... OMG... I was also in Garden 5 during my stay in Korea.... I might have been to the places they were showing in this commercial except for... it was not until after I left Korea did I came across this Korean drama and heard of the man 张根硕...

It apparently is a new shopping complex in Songpa, which just opened in June... According to some info from Wikipedia, it is now the largest shopping mall in Asia... (Don't know whether it is true or not...)

Getting there was really easy... if by subway, get off subway line 8 at the Jangji station (장지역, 長旨).

The first question that came to my mind when arriving at Garden 5 was... "There are only 4 buildings in total... Where is the 5th?"

My Korean friend had no idea either....

Since shopping has never been my kind of thing, Garden 5 would have been filtered out automatically... except for... my friend had some time that day and was going to take her son to Garden 5... and... since she asked, I followed.  Thank about it... well... going to the department stores with Koreans... could be accounted as some pretty genuine Korean experience... as good as visiting places like Namsangol Hanok Village (남산골한옥마을 or 南山韓屋) ...  I guess... 8-O lol

After googling around for the entire afternoon, I still could not find much info about Garden 5 except for the following article written at the end of 2009... The Garden 5 development is slow to progress  (Looking back... when walking around, we did still find a whole lot of empty spaces...) 

One thing I would say is that... this could also be the shoe-lovers' paradise...  following is a picture of the multi-floor shoe department...

You see the sign on the shelf with a telephone number?

Apparently, because there are not so many people around, the shop keeper has gone somewhere else.  This posting tells people that... this is my cell number... give me a call if you need some help... (Never seen things like this before... 8-O lol)

Shoe department in Garden 5

An outdoor shop at Garden 5.. found a bag with NYPD on it