Message in a bottle washes up 4,000 miles away on Hawaii beach 37 years later with note from Japanese student

A MESSAGE in a bottle tossed out to sea in Japan almost four decades ago has washed up 4,000 miles away on a Hawaiian beach.

The note scrawled by a Japanese student was tucked into a glass bottle and cast adrift in 1984 - with the container only now resurfacing 37 years on.

Abbie Graham, nine, was at Paradise Park in Keaau with her family when she spotted the bottle - plastered in mud - among the seashells.

Her dad, John Graham, was skeptical about her find, telling the : “I thought it was trash and she thought it was treasure.”

Abbie added: “It was stuck in the mud and I grabbed it out and I gave it to dad.

"A couple days later we opened it up and it was from Japan.”

The youngster described the contents of the bottle as smelling like a “wet cat”.

After opening the bottle, Abbie and her dad discovered the note had been hurled into the sea in 1984 as part of a school project to monitor ocean currents.

The scrolls of paper - written in English, Spanish and Japanese - amazingly remained intact and explained that the bottle was part of a project by the Chiba Prefectural Choshi High School natural science club, near Tokyo, reports.

It said "this bottle was thrown into the sea off the coast of Choshi, Japan, in July 1984" and requested whoever found it let the school know where and when.

Abbie sent the letter back to the school, alongside a drawing of herself and her sister eating sushi.

"The students were delighted to get the letter back," Jun Hayashi, vice-principal of Choshi high school, told Vice.

"Though the high schoolers at the time have since graduated, it’s nonetheless been fun for current students."

'NOSTALGIC MEMORIES'

Back in the 1980s, high schoolers at Chosi hurled 750 bottles into the sea as part of a project - and for the next dozen years, they received reports of 50 of the bottles being found in Japan, the Philippines, China, and the US west coast.

But after 2002, the school did not hear of any more findings and the science club disbanded in 2007.

Mayumi Kandu, a former member of the club, said she was shocked to hear another container had been discovered

"It brought back a lot of nostalgic memories of when I was a high school student," the 54-year-old said.

"I’m very thankful to the girl who picked up the bottle, to my old high school for organizing this project, and to everyone involved."