#20260302

Emmerdale 2026 Kiss Counter: 23/?

Date: March 2 Type: Head Pairing: Mandy/Paddy YTD Pairing Total: 4/?

My last blog post! Wow! It may have taken me 3 days to get to writing it but I am writing it so I can say I successfully captured my whole trip.

I don't know if it was my intention when I booked my flights, but my flight Osaka -> Vancouver didn't leave until 7:20pm on the 2nd. Maybe I wanted to give myself that day in Osaka? But tbh the day of a flight (any travel, but for flights it's worse) I am almost inescapably stuck in "wait mode," where I don't really want to do much or know what to do in the hours before I have to be at the airport. My hostel checkout was 10am, and I had determined that the latest I wanted to be heading to the airport (~1hr transit) was 3:30. I had learned from my mistakes of taking the train to Kyoto station at rush hour, and did not want a repeat of this, even though I was sure I didn't need the whole 3 hours before the flight. I found a luggage storage place right around my hostel, which was conveniently also right by the train line to the airport. And best of all, it was dirt cheap! It ended up costing me only ¥150 (~$1.30CAD) to store my suitcase and backpack for the day. God bless the man that runs that place.

And, I was able to get all of my stuff packed up alright. I had scattered things all over my very small hostel room, and was a wee bit concerned with the bulky dress I'd bought and the souvenirs throughout. But I was mindful to buy only small souvenirs (no otomatone for me...), and on my way to Japan I had packed my daily purse folded up in my suitcase (which took up a decent amount of space), so I knew I would have a lot more space on the way back.

I had room to spare, which is great, because I still hadn't bought any snacks yet and I was determined to source some fun kitkats to bring home for my friends. After packing I had still about an hour until checkout so I headed downstairs for a coffee, then back up to strip the bedding and collect my items, triple checking I had everything on me!

I started off by sourcing breakfast. I guess I was really ready to be home, because I went to a very Western restaurant. They were serving up America-core in a Hawaiian way, in a very cute beach themed place, called "Limally Cafe." I sat at a whitewashed picnic table, and the restaurant was done up in blue and white shiplap with Hawaiian and more generally American snacks, posters, a ton of flags all over the ceiling. It felt very Americacore to also have my coffee served in a single-use cup and be given single-use cutlery even though I was eating in. I opted for scrambled eggs and avocado toast that I couldn't finish because they leaned into the American portions too, I think! It was delicious though, especially the avocado toast, I don't know what they mixed into it but it was really good.

One of the places I needed to hit up before I left the city was a specific pudding stall in Dotombori, since I missed it last time I was in the area. I could have transited there but it was only a half hour walk, and I had lots of time, so I ended up just walking there. I think I ended up walking down friggin Nerd Street or something, I was surrounded by stores with hundreds of gachapons, ones with claw machines, and many stores selling figures (anime, game, etc.). I also saw a bunch of fellow bedecorated young folks walking around with a million trinkets on their bags. None of the stores really interested me (not the kinds of games I play), but it was amusing to see!

Once I got to Dotombori, the pudding place wasn't open yet, so I went into the huge Don Quijote to get snacks and see if I could find some Hobbes-like slippers I'd seen at a different location. No luck on the slippers, but absolute success on the snacks! I was also extremely temped by a lot of the character goods they had (mostly Sanrio), the extremely fun looking otomotones (they were just too big to comfortably fit in my backpack unfortunately), and I went through the whole contact lens section to see if there was anything that I wanted. Not really, they were mostly different shades of brown, understandable, but I was looking more for green or blue or pink. They had some, but all seemed to be at most monthly, and I like to get yearly ones for my colour contacts. I was happy with the snack success though! I found 4 fun flavours of kitkats (matcha latte, strawberry cheesecake, sakura and soybean poweder, and peach) and some tasty sounding pocky (oranges from Ehime).

I realized once I got home that I should have bought more :( I had some more space in my backpack/purse, I wasn't sure since I didn't have my backpack on me; I'm glad I played it safe, but I could have fit more to share with more people! That's okay, only a few friends will get omiyage but I tried my best.

Finally, onto the hotly anticipated pudding. Lee Know from Stray Kids had specifically recommended this place, and indeed the small storefront had a bunch of pictures of him and his little character (a bunny called Leebit). The clerk kindly let me take a picture! I got 2 puddings, one that I ate right there (she had given me some small plastic spoons), and one I put in my purse for later. Not too much later, though, since they're supposed to be kept cold.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I hadn't had Japanese pudding before, but I would have called it a custard over a pudding. Maybe that's just a translation thing? Definitely could taste the egg in it, which in my opinion was a good thing. It was not too sweet, really hit the spot, and nice and light! I know some Japanese style puddings have a layer of caramel sauce on them which this one didn't, yet it didn't taste like it was missing anything. Thanks for the rec, Lee Know.

At a loss of what to do next (I had accomplished my grand pudding goals), I saw that I had bookmarked on the map nearby a store called Object. Here, you picked a canvas item (pouch, keychain, card holder, bag, basically anything) and then chose little patches to decorate it with, laying them out in a little tray. They had hundreds of patches! Also probably hundreds of objects to decorate. I decided to make a bunny-themed photocard holder for the bunny-themed idols I like, but then when I was walking around looking at all the patches I saw some teeny tiny worms that I really wanted to use. So, I grabbed a keychain strap to decorate with the theme of "critter picnic." I was basically giggling as I was laying that design out, having so much fun! It ended up being SO overpriced oh my god, you went to the cash for them to tally all your patches and pay before they ironed it, and I was gut punched by the price (you don't have to know), but I was committed. Oops. I did not pay attention to how much each patch cost. More than they're worth absolutely. It's fine, my things are stinkin cute.

The Korean text on the photocard holder (it was a Korean business) says "let's live cutely"! And I cannot stop looking at critter picnic. I love them. Absolutely worth it.

I had originally planned on a gyoza restaurant near my hostel/luggage storage for lunch, but I still wasn't hungry after breakfast so I passed that up (I would regret this later), and out of things to do I just... transited back to the area near the train station and tried to find a cafe to sit in for a bit. Two of the ones I had bookmarked claimed to be open, but when walking past them were extremely closed. I found one in the same arcade as my hostel and went in. Big mistake. This cafe allowed smoking indoors, and it was coated in the smell and also there was someone there actively smoking. But because of who I am as a person I felt too awkward to turn tail and leave, it was such a small place and I had already been greeted.. so I suffered through a coffee there and immediately went for a much needed walk to a nearby and underwhelming park (explicitly NOT going Tennoji Zoo which I'd seen rough reviews of). Japan has an extreme shortage of places to just sit outside, but I figured a park would have some benches (correct). I ate my second pudding here and felt like enough time had passed that I wouldn't be at the airport stupid early, so collected my bags and headed to the train station.

I was extremely careful about reading the signage to get on the right train, standing on the indicated platform and everything, but once my train left it 100% was going in the wrong direction. Easy enough to get off at the next stop and switch directions but like... why did all of the signs lie to me? As I was verifying the route while waiting on the now hopefully actually correct platform, my data on my eSIM ran out. Talk about impeccable time! Mere hours before the end of my trip! Hell yeah. So I trusted in the train and luckily this one was going the right way. Thanks to the announcements on board being in English I realized the train would be splitting at a stop a few before the airport, with half the train going to a different destination, so I switched cars. Phew! This is why I don't listen to music on public transit in unfamiliar cities. Could have had a pretty brutal detour in my trip. But I made it to Kansai Airport and by the time I got to the check-in location, my airline was just about to open the desks (it being around 4:15pm at this time I think). Despite checking in online I still had to use a machine to get my baggage tag before queuing to talk to a desk agent, but at least this machine did not thwart me! I always prefer to do things with real human employees since there's less chance of error. Alas. I cannot resist our machine overlords.

Security was fast, but the Kansai airport funnels you from security straight into the fragrance section of their duty free shopping area, brutal. And I had had my mask off to go through security. Y'all, I could taste it. I could taste so much horrible perfume. It was an attack. I speed walked through there and finally had the chance to change into a not sweaty shirt I had packed in my backpack, knowing the transit to the airport and security hullabaloo would make me wicked uncomfortable. After that I admitted that I needed to eat before my flight, and sought about finding something at the airport. This is what broke me.

The Kansai airport, in my eyes, was really determined to be a fancy airport. I had been assuming that with the prevalence of convenience stores across the entire country that I would be able to find something simple and easy to eat at the airport, and maybe use up the stored money on my Suica card. But noooo, Kansai airport is too good for that. They only had nice ass restaurants with "authentic Japanese foods" (meat) or upscale Western fusion restaurants (meat and seafood). I paced the entire terminal and came up empty for vegetarian options. I thought I was saved when I found an Italian place, and a red sauce pasta on their menu, but when I talked to the employees and asked if there was meat in it they checked their allergen list and it said there was pork and fish in it. What? That didn't make any sense. But they had the ingredient list... There were sad looking single slices of margherita pizzas in a prepackaged area, so I brought that over and asked about that, and they looked it up and also said it had meat in it. Surely not, right? I took a look at their allergen sheet and it had a full table of all of their items and the allergens, but it made no distinction between actual ingredients and possible cross-contaminations. I don't give a shit about cross-contaminations at this point. So I used my translation app to ask the staff if there was *actually* meat in the items or just the possibility of meat, and they adamantly told me there was actually meat in it. I had cased the entire terminal with all of the menus and there was nothing resembling dinner that I could eat. I will admit this turned into a moderately well controlled breakdown (controlled in that I made it to the bathroom first). I was just so tired from a long trip, and ready to start my journey home, and I had not had issues finding something to eat like this the entire time. It was really demoralizing and overwhelming (airports are challenging at the best of times).

After a bit I got it together and figured I'd be eating apple danishes for dinner or something. I headed back to one of the vaguely Western fusion places I had stopped at before since they had some pastries. As I went to buy it, I saw the menu they had on the counter at their cash registers was not the same one on their digital boards or the menu you could grab outside the restaurant area to look at - this one at the cash had a margherita pizza on it. I asked (somewhat tearfully) if this had meat in this, and the employee assured me that no, it was fully vegetarian. Y'all, I could have collapsed. I don't even like pizza. I did not want to eat the pizza. I had no choice. I ordered it, grabbed a cold tea from a vending machine, and (still tearfully) sat down. Once I got my pizza I pulled up a silly Ateez variety show on my phone to watch while I ate and reregulate myself. 100% the fact that I hadn't eaten enough that day contributed to how much the dinner struggle affected me. We were on our way to solving that problem though. Sure enough, after the mid tier pizza, the world felt a bit easier to bear.

Honestly, the flight itself was uneventful. We were a bit delayed in taking off (bad news for later), but I spent the flight reading (finally finishing that sci-fi book I hadn't touched since the flight to Japan, and making good progress on the 3rd book), playing Animal Crossing and Tears of the Kingdom, and listening to podcasts. Chill time. Not sleeping, on purpose to avoid any jet lag. The lady next to me had no concept of personal space and her elbow was constantly over the armrest into my seat area but I was not in the mood to say anything about it so I was quietly sulky. The 9 hour flight passed surprisingly quickly! And in the last little bit I got to enjoy looking out over the Rockies.

When the plane landed in Vancouver, I checked and I had just under 1hr until my flight for Victoria left (at 1:30pm). Uh oh. But surely that's enough time because customs coming into Canada is always fast. And I was sat in the first Economy row so I was going to get off the plane quickly. And I have long legs so I can walk fast. Sure my legs were stiff after that flight, but not as bad as they could have been, because I got the extra leg room. This is what I told myself even as we had to wait a few minutes to taxi up to a gate, watching the time tick by. My stress increased slightly when I could turn my Canadian service back on, and saw that my flight was due to finish boarding at 1:15. Oh no. I indeed speed walked as fast as I could off the plane and through customs. What I was not expecting was needing to go through security again. We had just gotten off a plane, that we could only board after going through security, we hadn't gotten our bags, and we had to go through security again. Bonkers? It was incredibly clogged up, with only 1 out of 3 lanes staffed, and already a decent line by the time I got there.

As it turns out, there were approximately 4-6 connecting flights all leaving around 1-1:45pm. When I got to the security line, it was around 12:50, so people were shitting bricks. The other passengers around me were muttering about it, and some passengers were trying to skip ahead of the line, citing a flight departing soon. Those were met with "yeah, us too." Even the staff tried to help some folks to the front of the line, but I guess other passengers said something, because she asked the crowd "do any of you have a connecting flight leaving in the next half hour?" and we all said "YES!" It was chaos. They opened another lane but of course could only move so fast. My personal struggle was getting my fairly tight (and not zippered) doc martens off my feet (back on was even worse) since they had swollen on the flight, despite my compression socks. As soon as those suckers were on I was outta there. I was half speed walking, half jogging towards my gate, it now being like 1:10pm. I glanced at a display to ensure I was still going to the right gate, and my flight said "final call." Oh god. Well, I can check "running for a flight" off my bucket list, despite it never being on there in the first place. I don't run! My arthritis makes that mighty clear! I even asked one of the airport cars without any passengers for a ride but they said they were going somewhere else. Okay. I didn't, like, sprint because I am not well enough for that, but I did run at as fast a pace as I could. Boy am I grateful I've been doing fitness classes 3x a week since September. I still showed up to my gate sweaty as fuck (so much for that fresh shirt earlier in the day), out of breath, and frazzled, but I made it onto the plane. Wicked embarrassing to be one of the last passengers on in that state. They don't know it wasn't my fault :( I did everything right :(

I was convinced I'd be the last passenger on the flight since it was 1:15 now, but obviously the staff had gotten word about the situation with the incoming flights. Apparently there was also an incoming flight from Edmonton that was delayed, what a mess. So we were waiting on the tarmac for 10 minutes past departure time for other passengers. A few others made it, and man, these people were just strolling at a leisurely pace towards the plane! Not frazzled or sweaty at all! Apparently "last call" has a different meaning or urgency for different people. Wack. Anyway, they loaded up a few standby passengers, and we ended up taking off fully 20 minutes behind schedule. Not that it really mattered, because the Vancouver -> Victoria flight is literally 10 minutes. Melody was picking me up and even though the original arrival time was 1:50pm I had told her 2pm anyway since I know things can take some time deplaning and everything. I didn't make her wait too much thankfully! We did wait at the baggage carousel for a while, no sight of my suitcase, which I suspected would be the case. If I barely made it onto that flight, the chances of my bag making it... slim. I ended up filling out a delayed baggage claim and hoped it would get delivered to me soon.

We were also picking up Lily from the ferry terminal (very close to the airport) since they got in at a similar time to me. Lily, Melody, and their third roommate Gillian were who was looking after Hobbes! So once we collected Lily, we went to their house so I could reunite with my cat.

I missed him so much!! It's always so nice to see him again. After petting him for a bit and chatting with the housemates, Melody and I packed up all Hobbes' stuff into her car (man, I can get a feel for what traveling with toddlers must be like), and then she drove me to my house for which I am extremely grateful. Hobbes was sulking for a while when I got home, initially wouldn't even come out of his carrier (unusual for him). I think he had a very fun time at my friends' house and he really hates being transported between places. It took him a few hours to come around... part of this complicated by the fact that I discovered my fridge had broken and needed replacing, so my landlords were in moving it around and taking it apart (Hobbes is pretty sensitive to banging/the sound of moving stuff). What a friggin day, the fridge was an unpleasant surprise.

To my landlords' credit (they are the best people ever, proven time and time again), as soon as I told them the fridge was broken they came down to measure it and go buy a new one. It had been running warm just before I left but we were pretty sure it was fixed, so the fact that it truly broke again meant it was time to replace. I set about taking everything out of the fridge and freezer. I didn't have much in the fridge since I had just been away, mostly sauces and such (including a basically brand new thing of doenjang...). I did however have a lot in the freezer, which was a bummer. I needed to borrow some compost bags from my landlords to get everything emptied out, leaving washing containers and baggies for tomorrow. Maybe not the fresh start I wanted or needed, but it did mean I got rid of stuff that had been in my freezer untouched for months. And the sauces/condiments/jams of mysterious age. I took my chances on keeping some of my pickled items and less perishable condiments (soy sauce, lime juice, etc), but most of it was thrown out :( bit of a pain! But then my landlords could remove it from the unit and bring in the fridge they had just bought, which had to stand for 24hrs before being plugged in.

In all of this, though, my suitcase arrived! I guess on the next flight. That's one win. After doing some light unpacking, and showering before my landlords were in with the new fridge, I finally laid down in the den with Hobbes to comfort him as he was looking quite unsettled. I was barely keeping my eyes open but couldn't go to sleep until my landlords finished. By the time they let me know they were done until tomorrow, around 9:45pm, I was drifting in and out of sleep (definitely gonna need to rewatch that episode of Make Some Noise). I finally got to bed around 10pm, having lived through March 2nd two times and being awake for (I think, by my calculations) approximately 30 hours. Not the most ideal day (days?), but I was home, with my cat and all my stuff, and nearly a functional fridge.

What a rollercoaster! A wild end to an extremely exciting trip. I am so glad my travel trials and tribulations came at the end, rather than on the way to Japan. I'm very grateful that the entire trip, things mostly worked out. I had so many incredible and new experiences, saw SO much, spent time with friends I hadn't seen in years, met a lot of really great people, and exhausted myself in the best of ways. There's gotta be a reason it's a canon event for millennials in their 30s to go to Japan, right? I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and hope I get to go back soon. I've wanted to go for so long! I'm lucky to be in a career that allows for (enables, even!) travel like this, at a job flexible enough to spend almost 3 weeks away, and have friends willing and eager to take care of my cat for that long. There's only so many ways I can say I had fun, but really, I had so much fun!!

I have a few photo dumps below this post of my Kodak Charmera pics that I finally managed to get off of it now that I have my own laptop again, they're comically/cutely low resolution, and it was super fun looking at them all afterwards! Having no idea how they'd turned out was giving big disposable camera vibes. I think they have a certain charm (hah) to them though.

Thank you for reading along, whether you followed my whole journey or only bits and pieces. It makes me really happy to hear that people have been enjoying this blog. It's something I started mostly for myself, to make sure I have record to look back on (I've never done well with physical journaling), but I'm glad I can share with my friends and family as well.