From The Asahi Shimbun:
Taxi drivers report 'ghost passengers' in area devastated in 2011 tsunami
In early summer 2011, a taxi driver working in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, which had been devastated by the tsunami a few months earlier, had a mysterious encounter.
A woman who was wearing a coat climbed in his cab near Ishinomaki Station. The woman directed him, “Please go to the Minamihama (district).” The driver, in his 50s, asked her, “The area is almost empty. Is it OK?” Then, the woman said in a shivering voice, “Have I died?”
Surprised at the question, the driver looked back at the rear seat. No one was there.
A Tohoku Gakuin University senior majoring in sociology included the encounter in her graduation thesis, in which seven taxi drivers reported carrying "ghost passengers" following the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Yuka Kudo, 22, went to Ishinomaki every week in her junior year to interview taxi drivers waiting for fares. She asked them, “Did you have any unusual experiences after the disaster?”
She asked the question to more than 100 drivers, and many ignored her. Some became angry. However, seven drivers recounted their mysterious experiences to her.
And the drivers reactions:
What impressed Kudo was that the drivers did not have any fear toward their ghost passengers, but held them in reverence. They regarded the encounters as important experiences to be cherished.
The taxi drivers were feeling the daily sorrow of residents in Ishinomaki where many people were killed by the tsunami. One said that he lost a family member in the disaster.
Another said, “It is not strange to see a ghost (here). If I encounter a ghost again, I will accept it as my passenger.”
So many things that we do not know - things that float past us without our ever being aware of them.
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