About This Site & Editorial Policy
Sonae & Shippo (「そなえとしっぽ」, "prepare & tail") is an independently run information site for people living with a senior dog or cat.
About this English section
This English section is the companion to our Japanese-language site, sonae-shippo.com, written for people who live in Japan but whose first language isn't Japanese. It isn't a separate publication with its own reporting — the facts, figures, and research come from the Japanese site, translated and, where useful, given a short line of context on how a particular Japanese system works (municipal pet pickup, the death-notification process, and so on), since readers here may not be familiar with it. Where the Japanese site is updated, this section follows.
Why this site exists
Almost nobody looks into what happens after a pet dies while their pet is still healthy. As a result, most people end up making these decisions on the hardest day of the year, going by whatever a search result or a receptionist tells them — often in a language that isn't their first.
When we actually checked, only 3 of 9 cremation providers in Tokyo disclosed their total price upfront. Even basic terms — "communal," "delegated," "attended" cremation — were named differently from one provider to the next. Municipal pickup services turned out to be even less consistent: pricing and conditions vary by city and ward, with no single place to compare them. That information gap is still there today, visible to anyone who checks each provider's or municipality's own site.
To be upfront: this isn't a site about the operator's own experience of losing a pet, and it isn't reviewed by veterinary or legal professionals. What it offers is research, laid out clearly, with sources attached.
The one thing almost no one can do while they're in the middle of grief is research and compare options. So someone needs to do that work in advance, while the day is still far off. That's the role this site tries to fill.
Running the site isn't free. Some pages carry affiliate links to cover costs. That's exactly why we commit, in the editorial policy below, to never letting advertising change how something is rated or ranked, and to keeping the personal-story pages free of ads entirely.
Editorial policy
How we research
- Pricing and municipal information is checked directly on each provider's or municipality's own site — not taken from secondhand roundups. Sources are listed at the bottom of each page
- Where an official site doesn't answer a question, we either call to confirm or pass the question on to readers as "worth confirming by phone"
- Product write-ups are based on reading every review available, not just the positive ones, including why the product didn't work for some people
- Anything we couldn't confirm is labeled as unconfirmed, rather than filled in with a guess
How we keep things current
- Core pages — cremation costs, food comparisons, and similar — are reviewed monthly, with the date checked noted on the page
- The nationwide municipal listings are reviewed once a year in full, given how many there are, with the date checked noted per table, plus corrections whenever a reader flags one
- Any change we notice gets fixed right away, without waiting for the next scheduled review
About advertising
- Some pages contain affiliate links, and this is disclosed at the top of those pages
- Advertising never affects how a product or provider is rated or ranked
- Personal-story pages carry no advertising
- We don't make definitive medical claims — when something involves a pet's health, we point readers to their vet first
Contact
For corrections or information to share, please reach us at teisei@sonae-shippo.com.
About corrections
We check pricing and regulatory information directly against each official source before publishing, but errors can still slip in — rules change, or something gets missed. If you spot one, please let us know at teisei@sonae-shippo.com. We'll verify it, correct it promptly, and note the correction on the page.