Every time we got back to the hotel, my dad would make his way over to the balcony with his camera. Multiple times a day. A few days in, I joked with him, “Every day you take pictures of the same sky.” He adamantly insisted, “It’s not the same!”

Japan with my family was just eating whilst my dad went to see temples. I brought my camera and intended to create some kind of travel guide or fancy travel diary, but I came back from my trip, looked through my photos, and mostly just found photos of food taken with my iPhone. I didn’t take out my camera at all! I suppose I didn’t feel any urgency about it because I had visited the same areas in Japan three years ago (recap here). But anywho, here’s a little food diary of what I ate in Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto!

All the way through middle school, whenever I went on a trip, I always brought back souvenirs for myself and for my friends. I would look for something small, something I could get multiples of in variations. A pack of pencils that looked more like mini logs with the name of a city printed along their sides; tealights with mysterious scents in ceramic tealight holders shaped like elephants; questionable soaps; notebooks smaller than the size of my palm made of recycled paper with the name of a city emblazoned on the cover; erasers shaped like food that mostly just smeared lead across the page; bamboo bookmarks shaped like dolls dressed in traditional garb; friendship bracelets in bulk; gaudy keychains; little figurines.

I’ve never visited Canada before. There were a few family trips to Seattle when we considered taking a drive up, but it never happened. But now that my brother Ken is studying in Vancouver, there’s a greater excuse to visit.

My mom flew to Vancouver with Ken to send him off, and has already visited once since. Then out of the blue, I got a text from my dad in our family chat saying that he was taking off for Seattle and would be visiting Vancouver after his business trip.

Um, hello, I’m the one whose currently unemployed and has time to travel — tfti?? ಠ_ಠ Jkjk. I wished my dad a safe flight and casually joked that I wanted to tag along — wink wink nudge nudge — and before I knew it, my mom had booked me a flight with her miles.

With that, I was off for five days in Vancouver, during which I visited five places, though you could probably hit up all the same places in less than five, but it’s nice not having to rush, ya know?