Have you ever heard of Hachiko the dog? Neither had I until we visited Japan for the first time. If you ever go to Japan, then odds are you will hear about him. Hachiko is a national hero to the Japanese! A dog so famous there have been several movies made about him. He has his own bronze statue next to Shibuya Train Station in Tokyo , Japan, where hundreds of people have their photographs taken with him every day. The statue is a replica of the famous and original Hachiko statue in Shibuya in Tokyo, Japan.
You may wonder why the Hachiko story is so famous. Well, I am happy you asked because I will give you the amazing, real, and very sad story about Hachiko, the dog. He had looked for the perfect Akita puppy for a long time until one of his students encouraged him to adopt a puppy he had found in Odate City, in the northern part of Japan. The train trip took 20 hours and must have been hard on the little puppy.
Professor Ueno named his puppy Hachi, meaning the number eight in Japanese. Eight is a lucky number in Japan. Hachi and his new owner soon became best friends. Professor Ueno loved his dear dog above all and treated him as his son.
The two of them were inseparable. As Hachi grew older, he started to see his owner off to work in the morning at the Shibuya Train Station in central Tokyo and went to pick him up at the station in the afternoon when he returned from work. On May 21, , only two years after Hachi was born, Hachi was, as usual, sitting by the exit at Shibuya train station waiting for his dear best friend, Professor Ueno.
But his owner never showed up….. It turned out that Professor Ueno had suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died suddenly and unexpectedly while at work 53 years old.
