Subtitles section Play video
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- [Narrator] One afternoon in 1999,
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Mr. Matsumoto had an idea.
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That idea would put his small town of Susami on the map.
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(orchestral violin music)
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(bouncy piano music)
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This is Mr. Matsumoto.
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He ran the post office in Susami.
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I worked at the post office for about 40 years.
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I came up with this idea to make an underwater mailbox.
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I thought if would be interesting if divers could send letters from under the sea.
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- [Narrator] In a classic, if you build it,
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they will come story, they built it and people came.
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Almost 38,000 postcards have been mailed from the underwater mailbox so far.
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- [Narrator] This is Mr. Nakanishi.
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He runs a dive shop here in Susami
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and he manages the postbox.
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The underwater mailbox is at a depth of about 10 metres (32 feet).
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It's in the Guinness Book of World Records because it is the deepest mailbox in the world.
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- [Narrator] Since the box is underwater,
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you can't just mail a typical postcard.
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So it goes like this, you come into Mr. Nakanishi's
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dive shop, buy a postcard, write your note.
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People use water-resistant postcards.
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They write on the postcards with oil-based markers.
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- [Narrator] Gear up, dive down, slip the note
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into the red mailbox sitting on the ocean floor,
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and according to Mr. Nakanishi, it will actually get
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to its destination.
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I dive down to the underwater mailbox everyday to collect the postcards.
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After I collect them, I deliver them to the local post office.
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I think the underwater mailbox has been a real asset for tourism in Susami.
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People come here from far away to mail postcards from it.
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- [Narrator] Ultimately, Mr. Matsumoto's idea worked.
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The mailbox made Susami a destination for divers.
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It made the town special.
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I cam up with the idea to make Susami more appealing.
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There's no other place where you can do this, this makes it special.
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(bell chiming)