Vacation Adventures: Kpop America!

I just returned home from a vacation in Chicago, and it seems that Kpop follows me wherever I go. (Previously on a trip to Canada, I found SNSD’s “Hoot” playing on a TV in a furniture store, of all things.) But look what I found in Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg:

!!!

It’s a Kpop America store. Probably seeing pictures of idols in malls is not that unusual if you live in Korea, but as an American, these things are crazy rare for me, so you can imagine my excitement (and the bf’s epic eye-rolling).

I had no idea it existed, and I was basically...overwhelmed by the awesome. I wanted to buy everything but just felt too pressured and ended up only getting a Super Junior keychain. I utterly fail, I know. But also the stuff was kind of pricey. Still, I enjoyed mostly browsing and seeing Kpop stuff in a public place!

Super Junior, Miss A, and TeenTop in the window.

f(x) and SNSD in the other window with GD’s “Heartbreaker” and SHINee World shirts (sorry for the blurriness; I was pretty excited).
Most of the store’s stuff was somewhat oudated Super Junior, TVXQ (i.e. just HoMin), and SNSD. Not much Big Bang or BEAST or SHINee (other than shirts), unfortunately. :( They had a JYJ poster, but I didn’t want to carry a poster around; I just wanted a JYJ keychain, so I ended up getting a SuJu one as a compromise, lol...(I am the world’s most hardcore keychain collector, I think.)

Horribly blurry, but: Ryeowook, Donghae, Leeteuk, Heechul, and Siwon from “Mr. Simple.”

Flipside! Shindong, Eunhyuk, Yesung, Sungmin, and Kyuhyun.
The worker was a very nice middle-aged Asian man whom I suspect was the owner, maybe? They had a TV going with Kpop MVs on it! And my bf actually recognized BIGBANG’s “Blue,” mwahahaha. So that's something. Slowly I will corrupt him into a Kpop-aholic.