Society

Japan message in a bottle washes up in Hawaii ... 37 years later

Sep 18 (Japan Times) - message in a bottle released 37 years ago by Japanese high school students has been found — around 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) away in Hawaii.

Members of a natural science club at Choshi High School in Chiba, east of Tokyo, released 750 bottles into the sea between 1984 and 1985 to investigate ocean currents.

The bottles — which contained messages in English, Japanese and Portuguese asking the finder to contact the sender — have washed up in places as far-flung as the Philippines, Canada and Alaska.

But none had been found since the 50th bottle was discovered in 2002 in Japan’s southwestern Kagoshima Prefecture.

The 51st bottle was discovered by a nine-year-old girl on a beach in Hawaii in June, the school announced, with the postcard-sized messages still largely legible.

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