Jessica Wants A Pet

Despite the fact that she appears to be terrified of pretty much every creature - four-legged or feathered - she has so far encountered (see below), Jessica still wants a pet. This debate has been going on for some time with little sign of any conclusion.


I don't much like pets, coming from the novelty-furry-animal-in-a-cage school of childhood pets where lifespan is measured in months and days - or the amount of time you could be bothered with them - rather than years. Gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs... gnawy, nibbly, rat-type things. The joy of stroking and petting, the scented pine fragrance of fresh wood shavings, all this went out the window when you opened the garage door to a fecal blast of ammonia and you realised you actually had to clean up after the damn things. You did that for a few weeks, got bored of it, and left it to your parents. So I like to think I know a little bit about where 'Jessica having a pet' is heading.

Sarah, on the other hand, is of more rural stock. Sleek, lustrous-coated, protein-bloated red setters bounded across the spacious countryside of her youth, and small furry creatures were strictly for target practice. Sarah would like a dog. A serious dog, not a yappy-type dog. So she wouldn't like this dog - you see a lot of this kind of pampered dog in Japan.


I don't much like dogs either. I'm very uncomfortable with the knowledge that every dog-owner you meet - especially in a place as law-abiding and polite as Japan - will more likely than not have a bag of poo about their person. I saw a man with four Afghan hounds the other day and just shuddered.


Like many things in Japan, dogs certainly don't come cheap (that would be budgies. Ahem..). Forlorn-looking pedigree chums cooped up in glass cubicles go for around 150,000 yen (£725) and upwards. The curious thing about the Baby Dolls pet emporium just down the road is the strange hours they keep, staying open until the early hours of the morning. This does not, I suspect, lend itself to responsible pet procurement. Does the inebriated salaryman lurch out of the snack bar of an evening and think "I know, I'll placate the missus with a cuddly little akita puppy"? Who exactly buys dogs at 1am in the morning except possibly Koreans, for reasons we won't go into here?

But if you just want to test-drive a terrier, or take a Siamese out for a spin, then you can actually rent pets here in Japan. Yappy-type dogs start at around 1,500 yen an hour, and you can rent a proper dog for 20,000 yen (a fraction under a hundred quid) a day. Just hand the beast back just before it evacuates, no need for bags of doggy-do. Just like a car rental - return it with a full tank. In Japan, a dog can be for Christmas, not just for life, it would seem.