In the past 10 years, 71-year-old Atsuko Yasumoto has fulfilled many lifelong dreams. She has swum with dolphins in Hawaii, climbed mountaintops in Japan, traveled to the United States, and won first prize in a ballroom dance contest in Tokyo.
These feats, spectacular for most senior citizens, are almost miraculous for Yasumoto: She accomplished all of this and more as a blind person.
Yasumoto was not always the confident person she is now. Ten years ago, just after a botched eye operation that left her blind, Yasumoto wanted to commit suicide. She crawled around her apartment in Tokyo looking for the knob to turn the gas on but she couldn't find it.
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