Just a bunch of photos of me with sakura and cute puppies!

It was early March, and apparently 2014 has a very late sakura bloom (early to mid April). But the moment i landed in Tokyo, i could not wait any longer.

RinRin was my roommate for a couple of weeks, and we went for an early hanami date at Yoyogi park, because even though the general bloom only started in April, there were a few other sakura species that are early-bloomers.

Kawazu-zakura is one of them.

Not only does it bloom earlier than other sakura trees, it is also much, much, much prettier because it is SO PINK!!

A lot of people are quite surprised to find out that majority of sakura trees they see are actually almost whitish, or very very pale pink at best, and not the romantic baby pink everyone saw in Google Images.

But Kawazu-zakura, is a shade of soft yet vivid pink, and the blossoms are pretty dense too so it’s really perfect for pictures!

There were only about 4-5 trees in total in the middle of Yoyogi Park, (as opposed to hundreds of the whitish ones that blooms later in April) but if you angle it properly it could really still look like you are in the midst of a sakura garden.

We snapped something like hundreds of pictures since it was our first hanami of the year, tooooo excited! 😀

From a further view!

After hanami, we had to travel to the other side of Tokyo to meet Champon (although back then we didn’t have a name for him just yet).

I haven’t been blogging about Champon other than the occasional random Instagram photos because people give you so much shit (more than your pup does, ironically.) when it comes to keeping pets. So i reckoned the more low key it is the more peace i will have. But anyway here’s a short story, for without it i feel like there’s a missing piece to this blog.

So the danna and i had been wanting to have a dog (and a baby, i know, we are two very greedy people lol) for a long time, but we couldn’t because back then we were staying at my 800sqft apartment.

By heart we knew we wanted a Shiba Inu (Japanese spirit ALLLLLLLL the way!), but we had a hard time finding a reliable source in Malaysia. Throughout the year we met a few pups at (amateur) breeders’ place and a few pet shops, but none of them seemed right to us. A few are not even legit.

So we decided that although it is super tough work, our Shiba baby would have to be made in Japan. There are hundreds and hundreds of Shiba breeders in Japan, and we picked one that is reputable and near-ish to us. Due to timing and logistic problem (we were in Malaysia), we had to pick a pup by only looking at photographs.

And this day was the day i went to meet our Shiba baby in real life for the first time.

It was a bit like first date. I was excited, a little nervous, worrying how we would feel about each other. Would he like me? Would i find flaws in him and decide that he’s not the one after all?

The answer is, i liked him. (I wasn’t sure if he liked me though. He was shy and didn’t talk much.)

It wasn’t really like love at first sight because you can have love at first sight with pretty much any puppy since they are so freaking adorable. Nor did we have this soulmate ppzzzzzzzt connection thingie.

I felt that he’s mellow (compared to other pups in the house), and have a generally very pleasant personality. But pretty much all pups in the house behaved really well. At 2 months old they are all crate-trained so pretty much they can be house-broken the moment you bring them home (that was the case for Champon).

Champon (left) and his friend who was 2 days older.

A black Shiba newborn was also in the house that day!

I held, hugged him and talked to him hoping that he would remember me and like me more (sounds so slutty and despo if i was really on a first date lololol).

(Not to mention i actually bring RinRin along wtf my date would be so weirded out LOLOL.)

So so so fat and cuddly! He was still having his winter coat back then.

Also took a lot a lot of pictures, because we had to keep him at the breeder’s place for a month more so that he could finish his vaccination before flying home with us, and boy you all know how fast puppies grow up! I visited him once a week back then, and every time he grew a little bigger and more mature.

We also met Champon’s mom, Otoki, who is very very sweet! (By the way Champon’s dad is a very handsome black Shiba!)

Before saying good bye.

So yea that’s the first time i met Champon. And the danna and i gave him the name because we once joked that if we ever have dogs, the male one would be Champon (a Nagasaki noodle dish), and the female one would be Castella (a Nagasaki cake). That’s how much we love Nagasaki. ♡