Kurihara City Welfare Office chief Toshiro Ozawa shows a leaflet reading: "Please call us. Counseling is the first step on the way to solve your problem," at a bank in Kurihara in Miyagi Prefecutre, northern Japan. Four years ago, suicides in this northern city were running at nearly double the national rate, and as the global financial meltdown hit Japan, they might have been expected to go even higher. But Kurihara has fought back, with impressive results. the city offers financial and legal counseling, along with "hope loans" _ or "nozomi" loans in Japanese _ to get the needy out of debt. (AP Photo/Tomoko A. Hosaka)