New Year ’13 Station

In Tokyo, there is a subway station named 「辰巳駅」(“Tatsumi Station”).

The Japanese kanji characters that spell “Tatsumi” are the characters for “dragon” and “snake”.

So, for that reason, every twelve years … including this year … that station is a kind of unofficial New Years station.

This is because 2012 was 「辰年」(“the Year of the Dragon “) and this year (2013) is 「巳年」(“the Year of the Snake “).

So, for this New Years, Tatsumi Station changed the signs in the station to read:

辰 → 巳
(Dragon → Snake)

It’s great!

Are dogs more humane than us?

In the news recently there have been stories about parents killing their own children, an American woman who let her ten-year old son get a tattoo, a nurse in Japan who enjoyed torturing her patients, a ship’s captain in Italy who abandoned the ship he crashed while his passengers were stranded on board to die, and other terrible stories about people mistreating other people who they were supposed to help and protect.

Of course, there are stories about people who act honorably too. The Italian Coast Guard officer who berated the aforementioned captain is one recent example.

But there were another two stories in the news recently too.
A dog in Australia and another one in Korea risked their own lives to save their respective families.

In Australia, a family with two daughters aged two and seven had a pet dog that loved the children.
One day last week, the two girls were in their backyard with the dog playing…but there was a very deadly Brown Snake there too!

The highly venomous Australian Brown Snake

The girls didn’t notice the snake, but the snake noticed them and it wasn’t pleased by their presence.
Just as the snake coiled to attack the girls, the dog saw the snake and didn’t hesitate to protect the girls.
The dog jumped on the snake and killed it…but not before the snake bit the dog.
The dog was rushed to the veterinarian to receive anti-venom treatment and is expected to recover…and will be get a “hero’s welcome” when he returns to his home.

The puppy in Korea was hiking with his elderly owner in the cold Korean winter last week when the old man slipped and fell.
He was knocked unconscious and would have frozen to death by the time his family found him…by his dog laid on top of him and keep him alive with his own body heat.
The young dog nearly froze to death himself to save his owner.

These dogs acted more humanly than some humans do.

ヘビ

A man in Tokyo was arrested after he called an ambulance because of a poisonous snake-bite he received by feeding one of his pets.

The police searched his apartment and discovered he had boxes of snakes. A total of 51 exotic poisonous snakes! And he didn’t have a license to own them as required by Japanese law.

He kept the snakes in plastic boxes stacked up in his apartment. If there was an earthquake, they could have easily spilled out and escaped.

Incidentally, last November, one of the man’s neighbors went to the hospital Emergency Room for a poisonous snake bite. The police suspect it was one of this man’s snakes.