From Seoul to Overland Park: Finding Pieces of Japan and Korea at Home
I used to travel across the world to find the things I loved. Now, some of them are showing up closer to home.
“You’re not in Kansas anymore, April.”
That was the thought running through my head as I stood inside Miss A, staring at a section labeled Straight Out of Seoul.
For a second, I could almost imagine I was back in South Korea, wandering into an Etude House on a side street in Hongdae and spending a weekend afternoon shopping with friends.
Then I looked over and spotted a popular Japanese mascara.
Wait. What?
I was in Overland Park, Kansas. And somehow, I was having a little moment of cultural déjà vu.
It might sound like a small thing. A beauty section. A familiar product. A store carrying things I would normally associate with shopping trips abroad. But for me, it brought up something much bigger: the realization that some of the things I once traveled thousands of miles to experience are becoming easier to find right here at home.
And I have a lot of history with those things.
The Kansas I Remember
Growing up in Kansas, I wanted more opportunities to experience the cultures I was curious about. That doesn’t mean Kansas City was without culture. It means that the particular things I loved, especially Japanese and Korean music, beauty, fashion, food, and entertainment, weren’t as readily accessible to me as they would eventually become.
I was interested in things that most people around me didn’t necessarily understand or care about.
I remember showing people videos of Rain. I was excited about SHINee, Big Bang, Taeyang, and G-Dragon. I wanted people to see the hairstyles, the choreography, the fashion, and the whole production behind K-pop. Sometimes, I’d show someone a video and they’d push my phone away. They weren’t interested.
I kept being interested anyway.
Anime was part of my childhood, too. I watched Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon at daycare. My interests weren’t a phase I picked up because something became popular online. They were part of the person I was becoming long before these things became familiar to a much wider audience.
Right after college, I moved nearly 4,000 miles away to South Korea. I wanted to immerse myself in a culture I had spent years being curious about. I wanted to experience the things I loved beyond a screen, in the places where they were part of everyday life.
And I did.
I was making YouTube videos about life in Korea, talking about dating, culture, and things I was observing around me. I trained in K-pop singing and dance, and I even recorded a demo while working toward becoming a singer. I was putting myself out there in ways that might surprise people who primarily know me through my more recent content.
But that’s another story.
What matters here is that I wasn’t just watching from a distance anymore. I was living inside a world I had once struggled to access.
Let’s stay connected.
New events, cultural finds, and behind-the-scenes dispatches—delivered to your inbox.
I Didn’t Just Visit Japan. I Kept Going Back.
My first trip to Japan happened the summer after I had lived in Korea. It was a dream come true.
I remember standing in a Forever 21 overlooking Shibuya Crossing, near Shibuya 109. I had worked at Forever 21 before, and there I was, looking out over one of the busiest intersections in the world.
I remember thinking, “Take that, Forever 21. Look at me. I’ve made it.”
It was funny, a little dramatic, and completely sincere.
Japan represented something I had wanted for a long time. I was finally experiencing the places, products, fashion, and cultural details I had been so curious about.
Since then, I’ve visited Japan four times, with another trip on the horizon. And every time I go, there’s something new to discover.
Daiso is a good example of how my relationship with these places developed. The first time I ever visited Daiso was in Korea. Later, I went to the famous Daiso in Harajuku. Over time, I encountered the store in different parts of the United States, too. And eventually, Kansas got one.
That sequence sticks with me. I experienced something abroad, encountered it again in other places, and then watched it arrive closer to home.
I’ve also been to Don Quijote in Japan, the kind of store where you can wander around and keep finding things you didn’t know you needed. Japanese retail has its own particular appeal, from the sheer variety of products to the little details that make browsing an experience in itself.
I know what it’s like to shop in those environments. I know the excitement of finding something new, and I know the feeling of recognizing something familiar.
So when pieces of that world begin appearing around Kansas City, I notice.
Explore the Global Side of KC
- From Seoul to Overland Park: Finding Pieces of Japan and Korea at Home
- Japanese & Asian Events in Kansas City (2026 Guide)
- Places in Kansas City That Made Me Feel Like I Traveled Somewhere Else
- The City Changed Overnight. I Noticed It at Breakfast.
The Little Things That Tell a Bigger Story
Sometimes, cultural change doesn’t announce itself with a grand opening or a headline. Sometimes, it shows up in the grocery aisle.
When I was living in Korea, I introduced my mom and grandmother to full sheets of seaweed. Even now, I prefer buying the full sheets and folding the unopened package along its lines so they break into little squares or rectangles. It’s a small thing, but it’s part of how I learned to enjoy the snack.
Now, seaweed snacks are easier to find in ordinary American stores, including places where I wouldn’t necessarily have expected to see them years ago.
Kimchi has become easier to spot in grocery stores, too, sometimes sitting near sauerkraut in the refrigerated section. Trader Joe’s has carried products such as galbi, a Korean-style marinated meat dish.
These products aren’t the same as traveling to Korea, shopping at a Korean supermarket, or sitting down for a meal there. But their presence at home can make a once-unfamiliar food feel a little more ordinary.
I’ve seen that happen in my own family.
Take mul naengmyeon, Korean cold noodles served in a chilled broth. The first time my mom encountered the idea of cold soup, she asked me, “How do you drink cold soup?”
Fair question, honestly.
I encouraged her to try the broth. Now, she loves it.
That small change is one of my favorite examples of what cultural exposure can do. Something that initially seems strange can become something you genuinely enjoy once you’ve had the chance to experience it.
I don’t think everyone who travels comes home with the same perspective. Travel isn’t a magical switch that automatically makes people more curious or open-minded. But for me, experiencing other cultures firsthand changed how I see the world, and it changed how I understand the things I grew up loving.
It also changed how I see home.
🌍 New to my Kansas City stories? Start with Globally Layered KC →Explore the themes of this post:
When the Things You Loved Become the Things Everyone Knows
The wider popularity of Korean and Japanese culture has been fascinating to watch.
K-pop is now a familiar part of global pop culture. Anime has a much more visible presence in mainstream entertainment. Japanese beauty products, Korean food, and Asian-inspired retail concepts are easier for many Americans to encounter without boarding a plane.
There was a time when I tried to introduce people to K-pop and couldn’t get them to sit through a music video. Now, younger generations are growing up with Korean artists and entertainment already in their cultural orbit.
Even I have had to catch up.
I recently looked through information about the current K-pop scene because I realized I hadn’t kept up with every new group. I started reading lists of performers and found myself asking, “Who? Who’s that?”
Then I learned about newer groups and how young some of their members are, and I had a moment of realization: the scene had kept moving while I was busy building my career and my own creative work.
I still love my core artists. Taemin and DPR Ian are among the artists I continue to follow, and my love of J-rock isn’t going anywhere. But my relationship with the wider K-pop scene has changed. I’m no longer trying to keep up with every new debut or be involved in every development.
That’s different from losing my connection to the culture.
My interests have been part of my life for years. I don’t stop loving something simply because it becomes popular, and I don’t need to abandon it when the next trend arrives. I can enjoy seeing more people discover it while still appreciating what brought me to it in the first place.
I used to think of myself as an early adopter, someone who found things before they became widely known. There is a familiar pattern in popular culture: a small group of people discovers something, it spreads, it becomes mainstream, and eventually the attention moves elsewhere.
But calling myself an early adopter only tells part of the story.
I wasn’t borrowing an interest to be ahead of a trend. These were things I genuinely loved. I was drawn to them before they became widely discussed around me, and I continued to care about them as the audience grew.
There’s a difference between discovering something because it’s viral and discovering something because you’re genuinely curious about the people, places, and experiences behind it.
And I think there’s something wonderful about more people having the opportunity to find those things for themselves.
Finding Familiar Things in an Unexpected Place
That’s what made the Miss A visit stand out to me.
Seeing a section called Seoul Beauty brought me back to shopping in Korea. Seeing Japanese mascara nearby made me stop and take it all in. These were products and references that once felt tied to experiences I had to seek out elsewhere.
Now, I’m seeing pieces of that world in the Kansas City area.
Miss A is already open, and I visited recently. TESO Life is preparing for its Overland Park location, with hiring activity suggesting that work is underway. I’ve also been watching EBISU, another Japanese retail concept that has caught my attention, although its future locally isn’t something I want to present as guaranteed.
I’ve encountered EBISU before, at the Mall of America. That experience gave me a point of comparison when I heard about the possibility of seeing the concept closer to home.
What interests me isn’t simply that new stores are appearing. It’s the relationship between these places and my own history.
I’ve visited Japan multiple times. I first experienced Daiso in Korea. I’ve spent time in places where these products and shopping experiences are part of everyday life. I know the excitement of finding a beauty product, browsing a store full of unfamiliar snacks, or wandering through a shop that seems to have an endless supply of little discoveries.
So when something similar shows up in Overland Park, I have memories to connect it to.
I can think about the places where I first encountered these things, the people I experienced them with, and the person I was at the time. A store opening can be more than a retail development when it connects to a part of your life that stretches across different countries and different versions of yourself.
I also wonder what it feels like for someone who hasn’t traveled to those places yet. Maybe this is their first opportunity to explore Japanese products in person. Maybe a beauty product leads them to a brand, a brand leads them to a culture, or a shopping trip becomes the beginning of a new interest.
There’s no single path into cultural curiosity. Sometimes it starts with a trip. Sometimes it starts with a snack, a song, a television show, a beauty product, or a store you happen to walk into.
Explore the beginnings of my Japan addiction
- And THIS is why I love TOKYO
- きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ in Wonderland with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu
- Thank You Tokyo, I Love You!
The World I Left and the One I’m Finding at Home
For a long time, I felt that if I wanted to immerse myself in the things I loved, I had to go somewhere else.
I went to Korea. I traveled to Japan. I explored places and experiences that had once seemed far away from my everyday life in Kansas.
Travel gave me more than access to those things. It changed how I observe the world. I became interested in the connections between places, the reasons certain things appear where they do, and the details that might seem insignificant until you look at them alongside something else.
That’s part of how I approach my work now. I don’t only want to know what happened. I want to understand what I’m noticing, what might connect one experience to another, and why it catches my attention in the first place.
I’m not claiming that a few new stores mean Kansas City has suddenly become something it wasn’t before. Nor do I think retail alone can tell us everything about a city’s cultural life. Kansas City has always had its own communities, histories, and cultural experiences.
But I can speak to my own experience.
I remember wanting more access to the things I loved. I remember traveling to find them. And now I can walk into a local store and encounter a small reminder of a place that shaped me.
That feels meaningful.
It feels a little surreal, too. The things that once made me feel out of step with the people around me are now recognizable to a much wider audience. Some of the products and experiences I used to seek out abroad are becoming part of the shopping landscape here.
And while I still want to travel, I also want to pay closer attention to what’s happening at home.
After all, I spent years looking across the world for the things that interested me. It would be a shame not to notice when some of them begin showing up in my own backyard.
What’s Opening Next?
I’m curious to see what happens next in Overland Park and the wider Kansas City area. Which international retail concepts will establish a local presence? Which stores will introduce people to products they haven’t encountered before?
And which places will become familiar stops for people who, like me, enjoy finding a little piece of somewhere else close to home?
I don’t have all the answers yet, and I don’t want to pretend I do. That’s part of the fun of paying attention while things are still unfolding.
I’m collecting the stores, concepts, and experiences that catch my eye in Globally Layered KC, a growing guide to global shops and experiences around Kansas City, including places already open and concepts I’m keeping an eye on.
Because sometimes, the world feels far away. And sometimes, you find a little piece of it just around the corner.
Either way, I’m going to notice.
Explore Globally Layered KC: [
I thought I had to travel across the world to experience other cultures. Then I realized the world had quietly arrived in my own backyard. Globally Layered KC is my invitation to experience Kansas City’s international neighborhoods, cafés, cultures, and communities – one story at a time.
Start exploring Kansas City →