The Rugby Ball: Surviving the tsunami

The Rugby Ball tells the story of two young Japanese boys, Kenta Yamaguchi and Hiroki Ogawa, talented rugby players from Kamaishi on the northeast coast of Japan. Both compete for a place at an international training camp in Canberra, Australia but only Kenta is selected.On 11 March 2010, while Kenta is in Australia, a tsunami strikes their hometown. He is spared from witnessing the horrors of that day, but the tsunami has a devastating effect on his life. Both of his parents are missing, presumed dead, his home and everything he owned is washed away, including a treasured autographed rugby ball. Fortunately for Kenta, Jack and Liz Nash, his homestay family, take him in and raise him in Canberra, giving him a much more comfortable life than he would ever have in Japan. After a few years, Kenta returns to Kamaishi to try to pick up where he left off. He meets up with Hiroki, now a sixteen year old. Hiroki has stopped playing rugby, hates his town and is bitter towards Kenta for being so lucky. It makes Kenta realise he can't stay, because he doesn't share the trauma and personal damage the people of Kamaishi had endured over the years. He returns to Canberra to forge a reputation as a rugby player of the future. In the meantime, his rugby ball, which was swept away by the tsunami, has been found by a group of research students on an island off Alaska. It eventually makes its way back to Japan and is recovered by Hiroki, of all people. The ball reunites Kenta and Hiroki as twenty-year-olds and is helps to repair their friendship and Kenta's ties to his city.