When I went to bed last night everyone seemed sick enough that I was worried if we would make today’s train. But my dad and Millie seemed better and we were able to pack up and get on our way.

Nick dropped the rental car off while I bought tickets at the station. The ticket vending machine didn’t accept foreign cards so I had to wait in the long ticket line to buy them from a human. It was very slow and when I got to the front I saw why. The agent had a large phone book with every timetable of every train in Japan. Sure technology can help us here? We have been constantly surprised by the incompetent systems in Japan, especially since it seems like things here should be so advanced. Today Nick and I both said, simultaneously, “we were so spoiled by China”.

We eventually got our many little paper tickets and got on our first train. We had to travel all the way back to Tokyo and then on to Osaka.

In Tokyo we almost got on the wrong train but managed to avoid the crisis and then got to Osaka a couple of hours later. We took a taxi to our new Airbnb. Millie was tired and still not feeling 100%, and fell asleep immediately.

When we arrived my mom and I went out to get grocery basics. We walked up and down the aisles of this store until we eventually found cereal.

We settled in and Millie watched her Sunday night movie (101 Dalmatians). She was still not feeling good so we agreed that my mom would stay with her while the rest of us went out for dinner. She didn’t want her parents to leave and screamed accordingly. As always we questioned if we were doing the right thing: should we listen to her needs and stay with her? Or do we hold the boundary and know that she is fine at home with her loving grandmother? We went to dinner.

We walked about 15 minutes to a very fun and somewhat strange izakaya. There was a silver gorilla in a cage and a guardcat outside.

Inside there were 3-5 toddlers running laps around the place. We never saw them all in the same location so we aren’t sure how many there were total. We ordered a round of beers, some tempura vegetables, and takoyaki. They brought us all the ingredients to make the takoyaki at our table and we had to do it ourself.

Our waitress could have been any age but we all agreed she was fun and has seen some things. We have no idea how she was related to all the toddlers, other than she seemed very comfortable with them underfoot.

There was a rubber chicken next to my head that we had to honk every time we needed her attention. It was humiliating and fun.

We walked back to the Airbnb and got the rundown from my mom on how everything went. Millie only tried to escape out of the front door once. After 6 straight months of being together 24/7, we are starting to worry about how much separation anxiety is ahead of us when we return. But that’s a 2026 problem and for now we’re still tied at the hip.