There is a thread linking Japan to Capannoli, a pretty village in the heart of the Terre di Pisa. Or rather, no: no thread, just a telephone. The Wind Phone.
The Wind Phone in Japan
Otsuchi, Japan

For the inauguration, a date was not chosen at random: 21 December 2023, the day of the winter solstice, the day when light prevails over darkness and the days become longer again.
As if that were not enough, in the Capannoli Wind Phone you enter from east to west, you enter with the dawn and the sun illuminating a new day. Real and metaphorical.
“Since my thoughts could not be transmitted over a normal telephone line,” Sasaki said in an interview with Bloomberg News, “I wanted them to be carried on the wind.
This is how the Wind Phone was born, out of the need to keep in touch with loved ones who are no longer with us. No specific religious connotation, just the need, human, to keep talking to the people we loved but who left us too soon.
On 11 March 2011, a little over a year after the Wind Phone was established, Japan was devastated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which was followed by a tsunami that claimed more than 15,000 lives across the country. 1,200 of these in Otsuchi alone, around 10% of the local population.
From that day on, Sasaki decided to open the Wind Phone to the public and allow everyone who lost a loved one in the tragedy to continue communicating. To date, there are over 30,000 visitors to his garden.
Books have been written, documentaries made, short films made about the Wind Phone. And Wind Telephones have sprung up in the most diverse parts of the world.
The Wind Phone in Capannoli
From the Santo Pietro cemetery car park it is a few minutes’ walk. A small climb and there it is: the Capannoli Wind Telephone. White, like the one in Otsuchi; the glass, however, is wider to allow the visitor to fully enjoy the landscape of Santo Pietro, Capannoli and the entire Valdera.
“I discovered this initiative born in Japan and was fascinated by it,” Marco Vanni, photographer and mastermind behind the Telephone of the Wind in the Terre di Pisa. “You can entrust your words to the wind, certain that someone somewhere in the world can receive them.
For the inauguration, a date was not chosen at random: 21 December 2023, the day of the winter solstice, the day when light prevails over darkness and the days become longer again. As if that were not enough, in the Capannoli Wind Phone you enter from east to west, you enter with the dawn and the sun illuminating a new day. Real and metaphorical.