Solex

 Update: SOLEX has been adopted by a wonderful family!

Solex is a 2-3 year old Shih Tzu who was pulled from a high-kill pound in Okinawa by the rescue group Doggies Inc. He is a very friendly and sociable boy who gets along with other dogs and kids. He is great on a lead and is puppy-pad trained. Solex has short legs so he has a hard time jumping on your furniture! He has been neutered and vaccinated (8 way combo shot, rabies) and has received his first dose of Frontline and Heartgard. Solex wants to snuggle you and sit on your lap. You know you (or someone you know) wants to adopt an adorable Muppet-pup! He is being fostered at my place in Tokyo and is looking to meet his future family. Adoption fee is 14,000 yen. Please contact me or Doggies Inc. and please share! 

http://www.facebook.com/doggieincソレックスがあなたを待っていますソレックスは飼い主さんを探しています！

種類はシーズーで現在２～３歳の男の子です。この犬は沖縄の保健所から動物保護団体Doggies Inc.によって助けられました。とても人懐っこく社交的で、他の犬や子供とも仲良くできますよ。足が短いので、椅子やテーブルの上にのって暴れることもありません（笑）。また、トイレもペットシートの上にできるよう訓練されています。去勢手術、８種類のワクチン、ダニの処理、フィラリアの注射も既に済ませ準備万端。あなたに寄り添い、ひざの上に乗ることを待ち焦がれてます！とっても可愛い子なので、きっとずぅ～っと一緒にいたくなるはず！現在は東京にある私の家で過ごしながら、新しい家族を探しています。養子縁組にかかる費用は￥14,000です。ご興味がある方は是非、私（もしくはDoggies Inc.）までご連絡のほど、お願いいたします。シェアもお願いします！

Thank you Doggies Inc., Bedell family, and Blaine and Nobuko Hoy for rescuing/sponsoring/helping with his vetting and transport fees!

Juno

Juno was my first foster dog through Doggies Inc., the organization down in Okinawa for which I transported Miller/Bowie to the U.S. on that ill-fated trip back in September (He's so happy now! He has his own Facebook profile.).

Juno was pretty scruffy when he was brought in. He had obviously been very neglected or on the street a long time. Long matted hair, sores on his skin where the mats had gotten really bad.

After a stint down in Oki with no takers, he came up to Tokyo to try to find a home here.

Within a short period, we had made contact with an adopter who adopted cats from JCN, whose father was interested in getting a dog after losing his cherished Yorkie a year or two ago.

Mr. A had suffered from some depression, but after Juno came, he felt much better having a companion. They take care of each other.

Jenny Jenny spinna spinna

Jenny got adopted by a great family! I love that girl.

I have this tape in my car (yeah my car has a tape deck, what) that I found in my house that someone in the family made. It's probably been around since before Buddha.
It's a mix tape of hits from the early '60s and has a bunch of great oldies. One of the songs is called "Jenny Jenny" and it's by an artist called Yasushi Suzuki.

When I was in Fukushima we would drive around and sing along to the tape. We'd get back to the shelter and we'd sing it to her. We'd sing it and dance around in Yuuko's kitchen.

Jenny was picked up in Minami Soma with her brother Kenny and about ten other puppies that were in the road. 

She's gonna be such a great forever friend. 

fleas abound

At our flea market booth at the Koenji festival, we met many dog friends who were happy to snack on the rawhide Crunchkins greeting cards that were our stand's special omake.

Miller becomes Bowie

On my way to the U.S. for a visit with the fam-and-friends, I had the honor of escorting this little fella to his new and forever home.

Miller, a Cavalier King Charles (CKC), was down in the Ozato pound on the gas line in Okinawa when Doggies Inc. uploaded his pic to their site. A CKC lover noticed him and alerted a CKC fan club, which quickly mobilized to raise money to get him pulled from the center, vetted, fostered, and transported to the west coast for rehoming. All the fine details on the Japan side were carried out by Doggies.

When they posted that they were looking for transport, I immediately vounteered as I was planning to visit the States in a few weeks. Since his final destination was Seattle and mine was Portland, it was a fairly convenient arrangement and I called the airline (Delta) to book his passage.

Upon arrival at the airport, I met the lovely Lisa who had been fostering Miller until his departure. She helped me get him checked in and paid his transport fee.

Unfortunately, there was a snafu after I got to the boarding gate. Despite making my reservation for Miller weeks in advance, confirming it a few days in advance, and breezing through the check in process, it was discovered when trying to load Miller onto the plane that he was not actually allowed on the plane. A gate agent called me shortly before boarding to tell me we would not be allowed on the flight.

After some scrambling and confusion, we were rerouted through Minneapolis. The agent who had been dealing with my case gave me the gate number and told me to run, as boarding was in process. Nobody told me why we had been ejected.

Upon finally reaching Minneapolis, I encountered another roadblock when I couldn't find Miller in the baggage area. I asked a baggage clerk - he had no idea. Asked a Delta rep hanging around the area - she had no idea. Asked another baggage handler - no clue. Finally one of the immigration agents went to look for him and brought him out to me, then escorted me to the front of the line. I have to say that the immigration person was exceedingly kind.

Unfortunately, after all the rigamarole, there was not enough time to take Miller out of the airport, as it would have involved going out of security and then having to go through the whole process again to get back in. I had less than an hour to make my connection at this point. There is nowhere at MSP to take a dog to relieve himself during transit. Poor Miller had to endure another leg of the journey without leaving his crate. We had originally expected that he would be in the crate for 10-12 hours, as the flight from NRT to PDX is 9 hours. By the time we reached PDX, he had been enclosed for more than 20 hours.

But reach Portland we finally did, where his new mama was waiting. 

And his new siblings.

Miller's name is now Bowie, and he lives in Seattle. Yay Bowie!

Here's a video made by someone in the CKC group that helped raise money and spread the word.

Yam-kun

Peetie on the left, Yamato on the right

My foster kitty Yamato passed away last night.

Yamato was a Fukushima kitty rescued last winter by Naoyuki Seki in Namie. He was very skinny and hungry. After a few weeks at the shelter, he came down to Tokyo for his neuter and ended up s...

taying with me. Relatively feral at first, he slowly over the months warmed up to us, though he was always very loving of his fellow felines in the house, Timothy and Peetie. In the last couple of months, I was able to pet him.

Yamato was diagnosed as FIV+ and in the last few weeks got very sick and stopped eating. Though he went to the vet several times and received daily syringe feeding and subcutaneous fluids at home for the last week, he was found to have FIP, a fatal disease with no proven cure.

He passed away at home, in our arms, with Peetie snuggled up next to him, purring and bathing him. I am relieved his suffering is over. I am so thankful for his companionship and growing trust over the past few months. Rest in peace, Yam-kun. Thanks for spending a little of your life with us. We love you.

Angel Auction at What the Dickens

The lovely folks at What the Dickens in Ebisu hosted our Angel Auction last weekend, where volunteers put their professional services up for bid. On the block were marital arts lessons, Indian cooking and piano lessons, a tour of the German embassy & meeting with the ambassador, and much more.

Photo by Jennifer Julien

WTD is a great spot even when they're not raising money for a cause, with free live music most nights. They also have nice food - in additon to the standard British pub fare like meat pies and fish & chips, they also have veggie offerings like a cheese & tomato sandwich, hummus, some kind of quiche, and other stuff that the chef dreams up. Plus the whole place is dark and woody with cozy corners and feels like something in Diagon Alley.

under the surface

We were fortunate to know a local in Okinawa, and when she heard we were on the island, Kate wasted no time in inviting us out. I met Kate in Tohoku, a fierce animal advocate with a talent for bargaining with animal control for the lives of condemned animals. On Okinawa, too, she works with rescue groups like Doggies Inc. She also happens to be incredibly good in a crisis, has allll the outdoor skills, and is ready for the apocalypse.

So when she said she wanted to take me snorkeling and kayaking (my first time), it was a big fat YES.

7:30 AM found us at Maeda, just down the coast from where we had hiked the day before. Kate showed up with a car stuffed with gear, and proceeded to outfit us with snorkels, wetsuits, life jackets, and flippers, to go over my newly acquired reef shoes.

She gamely instructed me as I floundered, treading water, repeatedly retrieving items I dropped on the ocean floor, including the underwater camera she loaned me.

Eventually I found my flipper feet and managed to float and paddle and breathe all at the same time, only occasionally inhaling a lungful of sea water.

I'm not afraid of much, but the sea has always freaked me out a little. I grew up on it, and I like swimming in it, splashing in it, and sailing on it. When I was small we regularly made trips to the Gulf of Mexico. I vacationed on the North Carolina shore, went to Hawaii as a kid when my whole family got bumped off of our flight midvoyage, and spent my adolesence dipping my toes into the icy water on the severe gorgeous grey Oregon coast. I'm not scared of the water or the waves or the depths.

But when stuff that I can't see touches me underwater... heebie jeebies. The ocean is so strange, the critters in there are so foreign. They say the sea is our last frontier other than space. That makes so much sense to me. There are some crazy alien earthlings down there.

Snorkeling helped me face that fear. Maeda is on top of a coral reef, and after a few practice paddles Kate led us into the blue cave. I was face to face with schools of fish, a pupil among them. They flowed around me. In their world, joining them and seeing them in their element, it wasn't freaky at all. I got to see that most of them are not out to get me. Most of them do not want to hurt me or sting me or bite me (most of them). And most of them don't seem nearly so slimy or scary when viewed up close and personal.

The pictures do them no justice. Forgive me, I am a snorkel and underwater photo-noob.

P.S. Kate makes beautiful portraits. Hire her!

sata-an-dagi and other delights

Thursday morning we gorged on the free breakfast and then picked up the rental car, a boxy little "eco" car (I think it was a Daihatsu Tanto) that had a feature called eco-drive that would cut the engine off and turn it back over seemingly at random. Northward! Onna-son (恩納村 - the "mura" character is pronounced "son" in Okinawa) looks far away on the map but in reality is only a few dozen kilometers and an hour's drive up the coast. There, we went to a "secret" beach recommended to us by a friend who grew up on Oki - beautiful, clean, and deserted.

Who's that asshole on the phone?

On the way back it was still early, so we stopped at Ryukyu Mura, a recreation of a traditional village. The ratty shisa dolls were cool and the pottery factory was rather interesting, but the best part was the live music offered, both in the main atrium adjacent to the food court, and by a guy casually plucking a san-shin and lounging in the doorway to one of the huts. He later came onstage and did a wonderful set, including an Okinawan language version of 上を向いて歩こう, aka The Sukiyaki Song.

He has a youtube channel!
Just north of Naha we stopped in Chatan, at the "American Village", which has a lot of restaurants. We poked our head into a Thai place and I was pleased to find a big fat vegetarian advertisement on the front window. Jai Thai's menu has two pages catering to vegetarians, and they can also make vegan dishes.

Returning to Naha, we hit up Makishi Market, the warren of shops and alleys in central city, starting just off Kokusai-dori. There are stray cats there, as everywhere else on the island. In addition to the trinkets and vegetable sellers and butchers, there are a few vendors hawking freshly-made sata-an-dangi, the local doughnut-style fried goodness in an array of native flavors. My Oki-raised friend has requested the purple-hued beni-imo (taro) ones, and we tried those out - yum. My favorite was the coconut, but the brown sugar, mango, and sesame ones were delicious too. Sata-an-dangi is Okinawan language, but the word sata means sugar, or sato in Japanese. Even though I couldn't understand the native language, I did notice that some words are similar like this.

In Makishi market

Back to the strays for a minute. There are SO MANY STRAYS all over Okinawa. They are a much more common here than on the mainland. Breeding seems to go almost unchecked. There are a lot more stray dogs, too, though they aren't around quite as much as the cats. There is a great organization called Doggies Inc. that works there trying to alleviate animal suffering. Mainly, they pull animals out of Ozato animal control, which is a high-kill shelter where many many strays end up. They then vet and re-home the animals. They do mostly deal with dogs, but they help cats too.  They are a registered non-profit in the US, and they do really good work. I will be transporting a dog to a new forever home in the States for them next month. Check them out!

めんそーれOkinawa

Shisa, the Okinawan lion-dog creature, decorates many houses.

Mensore means welcome in uchinaaguchi, a native Okinawan tongue. It's one of the most common native words a tourist will see around the island, which mostly, at least in the large commerce areas, runs on mainland Japanese.
This was my third time in the Ryukyu Kingdom, the first when I was a kid and the second two years ago. Again, Skymark was the cheapest deal I could find on a flight. Thankfully, no needy seatmates were in residence this time around.

Body-shaming freebie at the hotel

I looked into staying at the place I stayed last time, but the hostel has changed hands and a double now costs about the same as a cheap business hotel - except the hotel has the benefit of a private bathroom. We ended up getting a Toyoko Inn club card (¥1000-¥1500) because at a few hundred yen discount per night for five nights, it paid for itself. In addition to the discount, you get a free night's stay for every ten. Since the card is for life, it also saves me the hassle, at this hotel at least, of being asked for my passport. I always refuse to provide it (I don't travel with my passport domestically, and guests who are assumed to be Japanese are not usually asked for ID), but it saves me the whole refusal song and dance agitation. Getting worked up less often is good.

So after arriving late at night, cabbing to the hotel, and crashing out, we spent the first day in Naha city riding the monorail and checking out the city. At Shuri station, we found the cleverly named 35 coffee, and when I saw they were offering iced coffee for only 100 yen, we got one. 35 in Japanese is san-go, which in a homonym for sango/coral (珊瑚). This coffee company spends a portion of its proceeds preserving coral reefs in Okinawa.

We hit up Vegi Cafe Shanti for lunch, a beautiful little vegetarian cafe offering Nepalese-style food. Some of their sales go to building a school in Nepal. Yum!

These ladies are doing a tea-gathering dance.

We had both been to Shuri Castle before, but walked around the grounds anyway and got there just in time for a Ryukyuan dance performance! We got to see four traditional dances from various aspects of Ryukyu culture, from the courts to the farms. I love the whistling and chanting that goes along with Okinawan traditional music!

View from Shuri castle

On the way back to the monorail station, I spotted this storefront and we stopped, intrigued. NPO Agora is a non-profit dedicated to helping those with developmental disabilities, especially those with mental disabilities. Here they have a cafe and social space, and also sell arts and crafts made by their members. We bought some jewelry. This day left me with the impression that Oki has a higher than average level of do-gooders/socially conscious people.

We also hit the prefectural museum, which has both art and history wings. We chose the history museum, and learned about both the natural and folk history of the island and the archipelago(s). Worth it!

sacred spaces

beautiful food

At the beginning of April we had a benefit buffet lunch at Kamejikan (Turtle Time? Whoever named that place wins) in Kamakura, a rustic old building refurbished into a guesthouse whose owners graciously volunteered the space to hold an event for us. The lunch was catered by the talented chef Nahomi Edamoto of NHK's Kyou no Ryori fame, and this lovely and eclectic lady prepared a stunning vegetable based meal from farm-direct organic produce, some donated from farmer friends of hers. She used a lot of Japanese vegetables like burdock, greens, and beans (I forgot their names - mizuna? uguisumame?) and told us their story.

The gorgeous  wooden guest house boasted rafters and a tatami room and a Japanese style veranda where the guests with dogs hung out. Only blocks from the beach, the doggies Nana, Hana, and Chibi (in between foster homes) had a grand old time trotting in the sand and splashing in the shallows.

Thank you so much to the Kamejikan staff, Chef Naomi Edamoto, Miku Sano, and Andy Wainwright for helping us put together such a lovely and successful event.

photo by SeeMoreArt

Meanwhile, only about 15 minutes' drive from the shelter in Inawashiro, a stately white lady (the white lady loves you more) rises above Aizu Wakamatsu, gazing out at the valley over the baby in her arms.

The Aizu Dai Jibo Kannon (会津慈母大観音) is not so old, the locals will say scornfully. Anything less than a few hundred years old doesn't really rate in Japan, and she was only built in the 1980s. Still, she's impressive, rising 57 meters into the air, hollow down the middle, with a spiral staircase and windows at intervals to look out into the surrounding hills. You can get up to shoulder height, peering out of porticoes in her spinal column.

The grounds are beautiful, with terraced sculpted gardens stretching out far enough for a good stroll, with plenty of spots to pause with a picnic. Koi bubble and undulate under the bridge that backbends over a pond with wandering canals, letting the carp meander around the park.

We hope she sends her merciful gaze our way, just a few kilometers to the east.

Thanks to Ian, who sent me a donation with which I've paid for medical supplies. We've done spay/neuters, administered antibiotics, fought off fleas and ticks and worms and scabies, and much more thanks to you.

Puppy Galore

Taku is the friendliest.

We had a flea market.

Taku, even younger.

We had a picnic.

Sibs stick together.

Taku and Tessa and Kumi came.

Darwin has a bit of shut eye.

 Torro and Darwin came. Torro left. Darwin left.

Kumi and Yamato make friends.

Kumi left. Tessa hid under the couch. Bucket and Sydney and Alfie came. Alfie left. Bucket left. Sydney left. Tessa left. Taku left. Bereft.

Addy came.

She tore up the house. She doesn't like electronics. Take that, vacuum cleaner! Take that! DVD player! Take that, lamps! Hoo boy.

I love this poster campaign advertising travel to Tohoku. Great!

Iku ze!

Thanks this week to Michelle, who sent a donation. Thanks, Michelle, for helping to get all these puppies vetted, transported, and placed!