Freetoken and others who have lived in Japan may be interested in this. Today I heard an interesting story on “This American Life” about a man who put a phone box in his garden to connect spiritually with his cousin who had vanished in the waves of the tsunami that hit northeastern Japan on 3/11/2011. Over time, many people started to appear at his garden to use the phone box and the old rotary phone to call their vanished family members to leave messages of comfort. It hit me hard on a personal level because I lived nearby for two years in the late 1980s and visited this town and many others on the coast (I lived further inland and still have people there whom I consider family). But it is also touching on a human level for all of us. I’ve been crying for the last hour as I watched this video. It won’t help those who don’t understand Japanese, but the images are still poignant.

風の電話

Here is the “This American Life” link:

thisamericanlife.org