A teenage boy is walking along the muddy road holding a rusty shovel, on which is perched what appears to be a notebook.
School tie slightly askew, the fringe of his thick shock of hair partly covering his eyes, he tells me it is, in fact, a bankbook, owner indeterminate.
He found it near his flattened home, he says matter-of-factly, but there is something in his gait, shoulders slumped like the buildings around him and left hand tightly clutching a box of tissues, that tells me he has been looking among the ruins of the Hakata district of Rikuzentakata for something quite different.