Japan has faced earthquakes, deadly flooding, and 24 typhoons in the past few months and each time the same volunteers - many of them retired - have helped out.
Volunteers and firefighters conduct a search operation for a rising number of missing people in Hiroshima City after torrential rain brought on by an active seasonal rainy front. Photo: AFP
The major city of Osaka was hit by a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in June that killed at least four people, and a 6.6 quake struck in Hokkaido in the country's north this month, killing at least 44 and injuring 660.
Deadly floods in western Japan - the result of sustained heavy rains - left at least 200 people dead, and the 24th typhoon of the season, named Trami, is heading towards the country just months after the strongest to hit Japan in 25 years.
However, Japanese correspondent Motoko Kakubayashi says there's a strong culture of volunteers moving from disaster zone to disaster zone, which has been going since the Kobe earthquake in 1995.
"People seem to say that 1995 was the first year when a lot of volunteers kind of got together to help people in these disaster zones.
"It happened in a very populated area in midwinter when people tend to stay indoors with ... gas heaters on, so there was a lot of lives lost, a lot of people needed help.
"The volunteers who helped with that, a lot of them are still volunteers today and they choose to keep going to these disaster zones when there's a typhoon that's hit, when heavy rain has hit, to pass on their knowledge and their experience to those new victims."
Rescue workers transport evacuees in a rubber boat through floodwaters. Photo: AFP
She says many of the volunteers are retirees.
"We do have a very ageing population but there are a lot of very active senior citizens out there as well.
Photo: AFP
One volunteer in particular has been grabbing headlines recently: 78-year-old Haruo Obata.
"He is orginally from southern Japan but he hasn't been home in a while because he spends most of his time in his little minivan and he travels around disaster zones in Japan helping out victims," Kakubayashi says.
"He always wears very very bright clothing, he's famous for wearing bright red clothing and he says that's a habit he picked up as a hiker that it's better to be easily spotted.
"I think one other volunteer called him the god of volunteers."
She says he is a retired seafood restaurant owner.
"He often says that he never got an education but the fact that he managed to run a successful shop - he says he owes a lot to society for his success.
"When he retired he decided he wanted to give back to the society that had given him so much for over the years and that's what drives him to keep going."
She says one incident in particular this year thrust him into the spotlight.
"A two-year-old boy went missing in southern Japan, and he'd been missing for two days.
"Everyone was talking about it because it was this very quaint countryside village and nobody could find him.
"On the third day Obata, who was in the area, miraculously he found this two-year-old boy huddled up a hill.
Photo: AFP
"Rather than take the boy to the police and report him found he went straight to the victim's mother.
"When he first arrived in the area he talked to the boy's mother he made a promise that if he were to find this boy the first thing he would do was bring him back to her, and that's the reason he told police, saying that 'you have a job and this is what you have to do but this is my job, this is what I have to do and I have to fulfill it."
Kakubayashi says Obata's had a lot of interviews since then.
"He said he's constantly thinking of 'how would I feel if I was in the victims' shoes', so he purposely makes sure that he picks his words - he never complains in front of the people he's helping."
In the meantime, people in the western areas of Japan hit by flooding are still struggling.
"From what I hear from people who live in the area and people who are helping out as volunteers to try get people back on their feet it's still a very very long way from recovery."
While many of the volunteers are elderly, it's also the case that many of the victims are elderly too.
"Especially in rural areas in Japan, those areas tend to be populated by senior citizens.
The city of Asakura flooded because of heavy rain in Fukuoka Prefecture. Photo: AFP
"Say if you owned a house and it was destroyed you have a very difficult decision because if you're not working and you don't expect to live for a very long time it becomes a question of 'do I rebuild my house but I don't have the money'.
"In that case if I don't build a house, where do I go and who can I live with."
