Tokyo:
Retrieving a lost football is standard fare for many teenagers, but one Japanese schoolboy is getting his ball back all the way from Alaska, where it drifted following last year's tsunami.
Japan's Misaki Murakami, aged 16, lost his house and all its contents when the tsnuami in March last year crushed his hometown of Rikuzentakata in Japan's northeast.
But now, thanks to an observant beachcomber in the Gulf of Alaska, he is set to have his football returned to him, identified by the "good luck" messages scrawled on it by former schoolmates.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said and observant beachcomber, identified by Japanese media as 51-year-old David Baxter, had spotted the ball on a beach on Middleton Island.
"A school name is stenciled on the soccer ball, and his (Japanese) wife was able to translate the writing to trace it to a school," the agency said.
"This may be one of the first opportunities since the March 2011 tsunami that a remnant washed away from Japan has been identified and could actually be returned to its previous owner," NOAA added.
Japan's Misaki Murakami, aged 16, lost his house and all its contents when the tsnuami in March last year crushed his hometown of Rikuzentakata in Japan's northeast.
But now, thanks to an observant beachcomber in the Gulf of Alaska, he is set to have his football returned to him, identified by the "good luck" messages scrawled on it by former schoolmates.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said and observant beachcomber, identified by Japanese media as 51-year-old David Baxter, had spotted the ball on a beach on Middleton Island.
"A school name is stenciled on the soccer ball, and his (Japanese) wife was able to translate the writing to trace it to a school," the agency said.
"This may be one of the first opportunities since the March 2011 tsunami that a remnant washed away from Japan has been identified and could actually be returned to its previous owner," NOAA added.
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