About This Site & Editorial Policy

Last updated: August 12, 2026

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.

How this site came about

Almost nobody looks into what happens after a pet dies while their pet is still healthy. So most people end up making those calls on the worst day of the year, working down a list of search results — often in a language that isn't their first.

Among cremation providers in Tokyo, the ones that publish a total price upfront are the minority. Even the basic tiers — communal, delegated, attended — go by different names from one provider to the next. Municipal pickup is worse: the price and the conditions change from city to city, and there was nowhere to see them side by side.

The one thing nobody can do in the middle of grief is research and compare. So someone has to do it beforehand, while the day is still far off. That's what this site is.

Whoever runs it is not a vet and not a funeral provider, and this isn't a place for personal stories about losing a pet. What's here is published information, checked one source at a time and laid out so it can be compared.

About the English section

This section is the companion to the Japanese site, sonae-shippo.com, for people who live in Japan but whose first language isn't Japanese. It isn't separate reporting — the facts and figures come from the Japanese pages, translated, with a line of context added where a Japanese system needs explaining (municipal pickup, the death notification, and so on). When the Japanese page changes, this one follows.

Editorial policy

Sources

Prices and rules come from the pages each provider and each municipality publishes themselves, not from roundup articles, and the sources are listed at the bottom of each page. Product write-ups include the low-rated reviews, and what didn't work for those owners is in there too.

Updates

Prices change. The pages people read most — cremation costs, food comparisons — are rechecked monthly, with the date of the check on the page. The nationwide municipal listings are large enough that the full sweep only happens once a year, so each table carries its own date instead, and anything we notice changing, or that a reader points out, gets fixed as it comes.

Where you'll have to judge for yourself

What's happening with the animal in front of you isn't something you'll find out by reading this — ask your vet first.

What can be written about providers is their published prices and tiers, nothing more. How a company treats you on the day isn't visible from the outside. Judge that from how they answer the phone.

If you find a mistake

Even checking one source at a time, price revisions get missed and things slip through. Write to[email protected] and it'll be verified, corrected, and the correction noted on the page. The same address is where information and comments come in.

Hopefully what you're reading here is still a long way off.