An old, disconnected black telephone stands in the town of Otsuchi, Japan. The phone has been ________ by at least 25, 000 people since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. People have come to convey their feelings to ________ loved ones.

Calling it “the phone of the wind”, Itaru Sasaki set up the phone in his garden, on a small ________ with a commanding (居高临下的) view of the calm sea. The garden is ________ to all, and there is a ________ placed by the phone, the fourth such one to be used. Many people have left ________ for their loved ones on the books.

Located on the Sanriku Coast, Otsuchi was ________ by the tsunami (海啸) of March 2011. In the town, 1,285 people ________ or went missing, about 10 per cent of the town’s population.

“Come home ________. From your father, mother and grandparents.”

Sasaki found this message in the autumn of 2013, and eventually ________ the family who had written it. They were ________ their son, who went missing in the ________. The mother expressed her ________ to Sasaki, saying: “I have no idea what I have been doing since that moment. Time has stood still for me.”

Sasaki said messages have ________ as time has passed. People have started to ________ the deaths of their loved ones, ________ things such as “Please watch over us from heaven.”

________ people lost in the earthquake and tsunami, families who lost a loved one in an accident are ________ coming to honor their memories of that person. “The telephone is not ________, but people feel like their departed loved ones are there listening on the ________ end of the line,” Sasaki said.

Probably the biggest problem that Christmas brings to a girl is what to give her ________. Mothers always need ________, but there seems to be so few ________ for dads. After considering the situation, Robyn bought a ________ for her father,

ArthurStevens. Itwasn’t anything ________—just an ordinary, three-cell model. “It is ________ and he spends a lot of time on the water.”

Neither Robyn nor Arthur knew how much he could come to ________ his gift.

At midnight, January 16, the Coast Guard Station received an ________ call from the tugboat (拖船) Harkness ________ which were Arthur and his two friends. A rescue team set out immediately, but ________ of them was sure exactly where the sinking tugboat was and all they could do was to ________ ahead into darkness to where they thought the tugboat might be. The ________ that the boat might have turned over made them ________. Just then, they saw a strange light pointing straight up.

They found something that ________ them all: there, half-dead in the cold ________, were three “icy” men with arms ________ hooked together—their clothes ________ to a bucket that had dropped from the Harkness as she went down.

Arthur Stevens, the thinnest of the three men and the ________ to death, had long since lost his ability to ________ anything. Fortunately, the freezing cold had brought the men a lucky ________: frozen to the back of Arthur’s glove was a small, simple, three-cell, waterproof flashlight. And the beam of that flashlight was pointing straight up to the sky—guidance for those who’d had enough faith and courage to follow it.

I ran into a stranger as he passed by. “Oh, excuse me please” was my response. He said: “Please excuse me too. I wasn’t watching for you.” We were very polite. This stranger and I. We went on our way and we said goodbye. But at home a different story is told.

Later that day, when I was cooking the evening meal, my daughter stood beside me very still. When I turned, I nearly knocked her down. “Move out of the________,” I said with a frown. She walked away, her little heart broken. I didn’t________how harshly (严厉地) I’d spoken.

While I lay awake in bed that evening, my husband said to me, “While________a stranger, you are polite, but with the girl you love, you are________. Go look on the kitchen floor. You’ll find some flowers by the door. Those are the flowers she brought for________. She picked them herself: pink, yellow and blue. She stood quietly not to________the surprise, and you________saw the tears in her eyes.”

________, my tears began to fall. I quietly went and knelt down by her bed. “Wake up, little girl,” I said. “Are these flowers you picked for me?” She smiled: “I found them out by the tree. I picked them________they’re pretty like you. I knew you’d like them, especially the blue.”

I said: “Daughter, I’m sorry for the way I________today. I________have yelled at you that way.”

She said: “Oh Mom, that’s okay. I love you anyway.”

I said: “Daughter, I love you too. And I do like the flowers, especially the blue.”

I had got the world_________again. I’d________to be polite to people in the street – good________make society work. But a stranger is someone we meet once and then never see again – and ________ is for life.