Ichiban Living - Ahhh! Japanese $2 Store in Toronto!

Where have I been to not know that Toronto now has a Japanese (Two) Dollar Store?!  My friend had recommended this store on the P1 level of Pacific Mall (okay, it's in Markham) when I was looking to buy a pair of travel scissors (a.k.a. baby food scissors for when you are eating out and need to cut up food).  Anyway, we arrive and we're happily surprised that it's a Japanese housewares store.  We look around and it's small...but wait, wait...they have another level, one floor below which is larger! 

Sensory overload!  I had to stay focused on looking for scissors but my eyes kept wandering to all the little knick knacks and cute stuff.  After calming down a bit, I decided to limit my purchase to a few things.  Most items are written in Japanese though.  The items are also either made in China or Japan but it looks like even if it's made in China, it is intended for the Japanese market because the packaging contains very few Chinese characters, if any.

Picked up this cute mold that apparently is to make honey castella cake in the microwave in 90 seconds.  I was intrigued but also a little wary.  In the end, I thought 'it's only $2' and it looked really cute.  There were other molds and cookie cutters, and bento box type accessories but I didn't have enough time to look through them all. 

Instructions in Japanese

The mold comes with a recipe but calls for Hot Cake Mix which I didn't have so I used a Japanese hot cake recipe I found online.  Interestingly, there is a very small difference between hot cake and pancakes mix in Japan, you can read more here.  Anyway, only one of my 3 came out nicely because I didn't actually grease it beforehand and need to work on timing as my microwave is 1000 watts and they recipe was for 700 watt microwave.  Still cute :)

The store is not as big as Daiso, but it's a start!