The sad story of the dead dog

Once upon a time after a successful Haikyo trip me and my fellow friends went for late lunch before we wanted to drive all the way back to Tokyo. Since the area we went to was practically completely abandoned, there was not much of a choice of restaurants. So as soon as we saw a sign promising Ramen, we stopped. We were not the only guests, the place was already packed with at least 50 Bōsōzoku, which didn’t make me less hungry. Sitting down and studying the menu card, an older woman – visible stressed of the rather loud Bōsōzoku – took our order, mumbled an apology while subtle pointing her chin in the direction of the other room and left. We prepared ourself for a long wait and browsed through our photographic loot of the morning as I noticed a strange smell, which I could not really find an origin for. Then one of my buddies got up, took his camera and took a photo of a small, sleeping dog just behind me. I didn’t noticed the dog before and was surprised that he could sleep in this noisy restaurant.

But something was strange. I took a longer, closer look at the dog and realized that it’s a dead, stuffed dog – and the origin of the smell. It looked already rather used and I wondered how I could fall for it – then I realized that the dog was “sleeping” between 2 bowls with dog food and water – just as he would be alive. Ugh.

The dead dog

After we finished our meal, we left as fast as possible to get out of this place, probably before we were able to discover other, mummified secrets in the closet.

And in my next installation of the strangest places I ate Ramen in, I will talk about the Ramen restaurant in Tochigi where I had the pleasure to eat while 100 of dead pickled snakes watched me from their jars…