“Early mornings are routine for 69-year-old Hiroyuki Yamamoto. He’s typically at a busy intersection in the city of Matsudo, near Tokyo, where he volunteers as a school crossing guard. But one rainy morning a little over a year ago, an old woman caught his attention.

She was pushing a bicycle. She was kind of disheveled. Despite the rain, she didn’t have an umbrella. When Yamamoto spoke to the woman, she said she was trying to get to the city of Kamisuwa. That’s about four hours away by train.

Yamamoto recognized that the woman had several signs of dementia he’d learned about when he took his city’s dementia awareness training.”

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