If your social media algorithms have directed you towards videos about Japan as much as mine have, then you'll be inundated with a whole variety of Japan content. Some of it is genuinely interesting, but a lot of it is centred around the "you'll need to buy an extra suitcase from all the stuff you buy at Donki!" type tourist videos. I did actually venture into one, in Kyoto, and it was one of the worst decisions I made all holiday. It was just horrendous noise - audio and visual. Not sure if that's designed to make you part with your money, but it had the opposite effect for me. So naturally, the next day, one of my carry-on trundly bags completely broke - the handle came apart, some cracks appeared in the shell... And it became clear we'd bought quite a lot and wanted to buy more. So we did fall into that trap. Metaphorical tail between physical legs, I found some bloke selling suitcases outside a department store for next to nothing. Added bonus, they fit on the front of a Luup bike. I don't know if this has landed me on one of the "what these awful tourists do when they visit Japan" videos, but if so, you really need to head to Amsterdam and see what people carry. Seriously, I've seen cellists carry their instruments home from the Concertgebouw.

Anyway, this gave me a slight problem, in that we were now over our allowance (this flight being in economy) and CX weren't offering luggage upgrades (which they seem to have as a thing) on this clearly full flight. Once again, this benighted site came to my aid, as I found a way to get an RJ status match which, thankfully, completed a day and a bit before our departure. Phew. The rates for extra luggage didn't look to enticing.

And so, after a holiday so good it's almost painful to look back on, we found ourselves standing under a overpass in Arashiyama at some ungodly hour of the morning. This sounds worse than it was - our Airbnb was tucked down a side street that you had to juke down under the overpass to get to, and it was raining pretty heavily, so it was a good place to wait for our MK Taxi (the kind that can take a decent amount of luggage). Our departure time would have needed us to send luggage to the airport 2-3 days in advance, and that was more hassle than carrying it. Departures like this are always slightly melancholy, but we left Arashiyama ("Storm Mountain") with a dramatic view of how it was named, and drifted quietly and shockingly rapidly through the streets of Kyoto, the only signs of life being the 24-hour Family Marts in nighttime lighting mode. It was so quick that I updated the reservation we had for the Haruka train (the one that goes direct from Kyoto to Kansai Airport) to the earlier - indeed, earliest train.

(Quick aside, we booked the tickets through KKDay - other resellers available, etc, etc - and it used a service called WestQR, which I assume is a gentle pun on WestJR. I can appreciate this level of humour. Like many things around travel in Japan, it's slightly tricky to figure out - the website to activate and manage reservations and tickets is buried deep in the links you get sent - but it actually works a treat. Decent discount, and you can pre-book Ltd Exp seats easily from abroad. So, I used this to get us on the 05:45 from Kyoto. We got through the barriers easily enough and well, lucky I did book a seat, there were at least 4 other people in the carriage - 5 after Shin-Osaka.)

The Haruka in question was half normal, half Hello Kitty branded. We were in the Hello Kitty section, much to my son's disgust/delight and to my amusement. Grumpy-faced selfies may have been taken. Last time I took this train was 15 years ago, fresh (and I use the word loosely) off the LH flight in KIX, and it seemed to take an age, as I drifted in and out of sleep. This time, I rather enjoyed it, like a tour of Osaka while it wakes up. Got to the airport in good time, which is good, given the uncharacteristic reputation this service has for delays.

We were on a CX flight to HKG, and only the CX premium checkin was open at this point, so we were doubly grateful for the RJ status match. We were slightly grandiosely presented with lounge invitations for two of us, and my joke about my son waiting at the door went down exactly as you'd predict.

Security was a breeze - almost no queue, new enough scanners to leave everything in. Outbound passport control was interesting - first time I've seen e-gates done by height rather than age. Which meant that my 8yo son was directed to go through. He was somewhat hesitant, so a kindly man popped out, helped him through, and waited with him until we arrived. Kansai seems to have adopted the exit-through-the-gift-shop mentality now loved by airports that need a bit of extra cash, but it wasn't one of the worse ones I've been through. The shops around the exit looked suitably uninteresting, so we decided to take a walk down what I still believe is the longest terminal building in the world, shunning the little transit train as we all felt the need to stretch our legs (and we'd been on 20k step days for the last fortnight). More interested in coffee from a bakery and last-minute purchases at a Family Mart than Duty Free and big label shops, we head down to the end, use up our Suica balances on vending machine water, and invest in an iced coffee cup to keep our lunches fresh.

We didn't visit the lounge. My son kept flashing me dirty looks.

And so it's boarding time.