A seven-year-old boy who went missing in bear-inhabited forests in northern Japan after his parents apparently abandoned him as punishment, has been found alive.
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Yamato Tanooka was found by chance by military personnel in a hut on one of its exercise areas 5 km from where he is believed to have gone missing and had sustained only cuts.
Tanooka said that he had walked "through the mountains" until he found the building. Boy's parents first said he disappeared while they foraged for edible plants, but later confessed that they had left him by the forest road to discipline him. Tanooka survived for nearly a week in the dense forest frequented by wild bears, where night temperatures fall as low as 7 degrees Celsius.