RIP Sasuke (2002 - 2011)

On Friday 11-Nov our cat Sasuke passed away quietly in his sleep.

Sasuke had been ill for some time with a jaw infection that twisted his 'canine' teeth and eventually prevented him from closing his mouth.   Surgery on his teeth helped but he despite medicine he never managed to shake an infection in his nose and lungs.   The mouth infection had led to kidney problems as he had found it difficult to drink, and he had been walking with pain for some time.

During the week it became clear that he was very sick and nothing more could be done except to make him comfortable.   At night he would come and snuggle next to me between my body and arm, and he felt very thin and cold.    By Thursday we knew the end was imminent and we said our goodbyes as we put him to bed next to us.  I listened to his faint and labored breathing as we fell asleep.   In the morning he had passed away.

Rika and Hannah gave him a lovely send-off.   They adorned him with flowers and wrote a goodbye card.  Kyo-chan came over to say goodbye and we had a small wake.

Minimi saying good-bye.

Then a buddhist pet mortician came to take away Sasuke's body, althiugh we didn't attend his cremation.

Hannah says that Sasuke has gone to live on the evening star with Yamaguchi Goro (see this post).   We all miss Sasuke very much and Hannah still (Oct-2012) often talks about him.

Hannah and Sasuke  2010

Sasuke in his prime.  London 2004

Photo-shoot results

We got the results from Hannah's photo-shoot with her agency last month.  

We were given hard copies (only) of selected photos from this years shoot, which we are not supposed to post.   And a disk with the photos from last years shoot, which I suppose we are free to use now.

These are from last years photoshoot:

And a sneaky copy of my favorites from this years photoshoot.

Halloween

On saturday 29-Oct we went joined the annual trick-or-treat event in Shoto.   Hannah's Alice dress arrived in time.  

This is Hannah talking to Takagi-san in our apartment

Shoto is the affluent area between Shibuya and Yoyogi and is an embassy district.  We met up in-front of the New Zealand embassy, then past the jordanian embassy, round to the Latvian embassy and past the Mongolian embassy.   None of the embassies were giving out sweets (none of the ambassadors spolit us with Ferrero Rocher).   But there were many houses, mainly American, indicated on the map, where children could pick up candy and chocolate.    

more photos to come...

Weekend

On Saturday Hannah had an audition for a job before her ballet class.  This was at the major advertising agency 'Tokyu' near my work, and was for an advertising campaign.

This was the 2nd round and a lot of children were being considered.  We saw about 5 others arriving or leaving in the 15 min we were there 

Hannah was interviewed by the committee on her own in the presentation room.   She was in and out quite quickly (I don't think she got through to the next round) 

Rika and Hannah had time for shopping at Takashita Dory before the ballet class.

Hannah trying out her Halloween Costume.  This was the standby costume because the 'Alice' costume Rika ordered was late arriving.

Hannah's artwork

On Saturday night we went to the 'Irish' Pub to watch the Rugby World Cup final.  

Hannah wanted to wear her 'mouthguard'

And this is Hannah playing her violin for me  as I left for work during the week

Jinrai

On tuesday,  Christopher, my shakuhachi teacher gave a shakuhachi rectal in Shibuya to celebrate 40 years of playing shakuhachi.

Rika, Hannah and I went to listen.   The recital was well attended with the 300 seater hall feeling quite full.    Two of my colleagues from work, Mikoyo and Kumi also attended but they arrived late so we didn't sit with them.

The hall had a glassed-in room at the back where Hannah could be noisy without disturbing the other concert goers.   However I foolishly decided to sit us in the main auditorium (near the door) for the first piece.    

Hannah was rapt from the moment Christopher appeared on stage from a trapdoor in the floor, and listened silently for the first 8 min of the first piece.  But eventually just before the piece ended, she wanted to talk about and we had to slip out.   Unfortunately not as silently and inconspicuously as I'd planned.    We enjoyed the remaining four pieces from the room at the back, where Hannah could wriggle, ask questions and sing-along. 

Afterwards we stayed back to say hello to Christopher, who was very nice to Hannah.  But I felt bad all week for disrupting the performance, since it was clear the he and others had done a lot of work to make sure everything was just perfect. 

Radiation Test

After the explosions at Fukishima and widespread radiative contamination, we've been worried about
Hannah's exposure to radiation, since growing children a are much more at risk than adults.

We were reassured that our geiger counter shoes external radiation to be reasonably low.   But we wanted to check if she had been exposed through food to the more dangerous internal radiation.   We haven't been very reassured by the public health measures on food safty since the radiation limit seems to have been set quite high (3x higher than the Russians limit after Chernobyl) and testing / enforcement seems patchy.  For example most of this years rice crop from Fukushima was cleared for sale!

Rika was able to find a company offering urine tests for radioactive Iodine and Cesium.  So we booked a test and started the slow job of collecting the 2 litres of urine required for the test.

But we eventually got the result.   Iodine and Cesium-134 below detectable levels and Cesium-137 at 0.15 bq/kg, just over the detectable level.    So low, but not zero, and certainly lower than we'd feared.

Family Road Trip 2

For the second day of our road trip we visited the beach at Yumigahama ?   Then we went to visit a rose garden at ?? north of Shimoda.

A rare group photo - 4 people with their eyes closed.