New Roommate

Katie picked him up from a JET in Kyoto the other day. I think we are calling him Samson, but we are also giving him a Japanese version with his own kanji: Sami. We still haven't decided the right combination of characters yet because they all have completely different meaning. There are around 30 possible readings for "sa" and about the same for "mi", so the total number of combinations we could create is quite high. After researching the meanings, one name we liked the most is 然魅: "Charm As It Is", or "Natural Charm". The first kanji character is usually a suffix read as "nen" or "zen". I came across the rare reading of "sa" when I was looking online, and I think it works, but I will double check it today with a Japanese teacher at school.

He's only nine weeks, maybe ten now, so he's still smaller than half the books on my shelf. He's roughly the size of my foot, as you can see in the picture. But in the mornings he sounds like a stampede. Whether or not we're actually allowed to own pets is a little dubious, so we're hoping that he isn't too loud while we're away at school. Other than that, his favorite hobbies are sleeping on stomachs and shoulders and chasing paper balls around the room.