The Phone Booth Otsuchi Japan

The ‘Wind Phone’ (kaze no denwa). Image from Mikinee.

Itaru Sasaki who lives in Otsuchi Japan installed this booth a year before the 2011 tsunami disaster.  He had just lost his cousin and was looking for a way to talk to him about his grief.  Otsuchi still has 421 missing, lost in the 2011 tsunami.

The phone is not connected but people, entire families, come to speak to their missing or deceased loved ones.

Listen to this moving story from NPR This American Life, the phone booth is the first part of this segment 597: One Last Thing Before I Go narrated by Miki Meeks.