In Japan, beloved pets receive human-style farewells
On a quiet weekday in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward in spring 2023, a discreet white van pulled up to an apartment. Inside, Jordain Haley, an American-born product manager, and her ex-girlfriend, British-born education consultant Margaret Jane, mourn the pet the two had jointly owned: a small gray rabbit named Megalodon. Jane, who was out of town when Mega passed, had said goodbye to the ailing rabbit by video call.
“We saw it coming because she had a lot of health problems and she’d been steadily deteriorating a long time,” Jane, 31, says of her pet’s passing. “Rabbits are very fragile. They have so many babies because they die so easily, but even at the end with her fur falling out, Mega was very tenacious.”
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