A red, wooden telephone booth stands on a hill in Tahara, Aichi Prefecture, overlooking Mikawa Bay. Inside sits a disconnected black telephone.
The booth was set up in June by a married couple who run a free school in the city as a spiritual way to connect with a student who took her own life in 2009 at age 18.
Tomohiko Kutsuna, 66, and his wife Kazuko, 69, named the booth Shiokaze no Denwa (phone of the sea breeze) after Kaze no Denwa (phone of the wind), a similar booth built on a hill in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, that was hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The booth in Otsuchi, created by garden designer Itaru Sasaki in his garden overlooking the ocean, has attracted about 30,000 people from Japan and abroad seeking to "talk" to those they have lost.