Late delivery again in Japan -- card returned 29 years later

TOKYO (AFP) - In Japan, it seems, never give up on your letter reaching its destination. A bottled card released in the sea by children has been returned nearly three decades later, the teacher said Thursday, only a week after Japan was marvelling at another long-lost letter found on a fish.

In the latest incident, a construction worker found a tiny glass bottle on the shore of the northern Shimokita Peninsula.

Inside, he found a card sent in 1979 from middle-school students some 1,200 kilometres (740 miles) away in western Japan as part of a class science project.

The construction worker, Masaaki Kondo, 54, complied with the instructions to return the card and specify his name, the place and time he found it and the current weather.

It arrived on Tuesday at the school in Tottori, where the current class of students aged 13-15 were half the age of the card.

Students of the school released 5,500 bottles into the Tsushima Straits between western Japan and the Korean Peninsula over 11 years from the early 1970s to study sea currents and Japan's relations with the rest of Asia.

Toshio Enjo, a 75-year-old former school teacher who led the project, said the return of the card was "unbelievable."

He said the school got 760 replies from the bottles with the last one coming some 20 years ago.

"I never expected to see the card some 30 years later," he told AFP by telephone.

The story came just a week after a similar surprise delivery charmed Japan.

A letter that a young girl sent into the sky on a balloon some 15 years ago was found on a flatfish hauled from 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below the Pacific.

A fisherman sent the handwritten note back to the sender, who is now a 21-year-old university student.

Enjo, the former teacher, hoped for more surprises in the future.

"The letter on the flatfish was totally a miracle but for our sea current study, I suspect there may be more stranded bottles," he said.