FEATURE: Japanese singer marks 30 years of visiting leprosy colony

Once every year, a Japanese singer takes her act on the road to a small island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, where she performs at a national sanatorium for former leprosy patients still living in isolation today.Singer-songwriter Tomoe Sawa, 52, has been visiting National Sanatorium Oshima Seishoen, located about 20 minutes by boat from Takamatsu, the capital city of Kagawa Prefecture in western Japan, for nearly three decades, deepening friendships with the residents there, all of whom have recovered from the disease.The sanatorium is "a place where I am welcomed as if it is my hometown by …READ FULL ARTICLE