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Hachiko: A Dog’s Tale is coming to movie theaters on December 18, 2009.

For those who aren’t familiar with the story,  Hachiko was an Akita puppy who was owned by a Tokyo University professor in the early 1920s. A special bond formed between them, the sort of bond that Akita dogs are known for. Each morning, the dog walked with the professor to the train station in Shibuya, now a crowded neighborhood of Tokyo. Each afternoon, the dog would return to meet the 4 o’clock train, knowing his owner would be on it.  When the professor had a stroke at work, and later died, the dog continued to return to the train station, every day at 4 o’clock, for the next nine years.

As the years passed, newspaper accounts were written about Hachiko, postcards of the aging dog and other souvenirs were sold at the train station, and a bronze sculpture was erected while the real dog was still alive