Amiri Afifa, a 24-year-old Afghan woman who lost one of her legs to a landmine at age 4, visited an orthotics and prosthetics maker in western Japan this summer to be fitted with an artificial limb for the second time.

"Does it hurt here?" prosthetist Hiromi Omori of Nakamura Brace Co. asked Afifa at the company's workshop in Ota city, Shimane Prefecture, while adjusting the socket of the new leg.

Omori watched Afifa, who had looked nervous at the beginning, become noticeably relaxed and smile when she walked with the leg, which had been specially crafted for her.

"So happy. Arigato," Afifa said in her limited English and Japanese, and kissed the leg.

Omori, 53, himself wears prostheses on both of his legs. "I'm doing this work because I want to see patients smile."

Afifa lost her right leg below the knee in 1997 when she was fleeing with her family from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to Pakistan. The vehicle she was riding hit a landmine. She lost her two sisters in the incident.

Her connection with Nakamura Brace stems from her appearance in a Japanese film "I Love Peace" featuring the relationship between a Japanese female prosthetist and an Afghan girl who lost her leg. Afifa played the role of the girl.

In the spring of 2003, Afifa visited Japan to film the movie. During her stay, Omori made an artificial leg for her.

Over time, though, the leg wore out and became unusable, with some of the buckles coming off.

Afifa, who now lives in Kabul, mostly stays at home because her parents ask her not to go outside, citing safety concerns in a country where risks of terrorism still exist.

According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a federation of nongovernment organizations, about 1,300 people died or were injured in Afghanistan in 2015 due to landmines and unexploded bombs.

Unable to walk freely mainly due to her artificial leg not functioning, Afifa was forced to leave the college she had been attending. But seeing her fall into depression, her elder brother sent an email to Nakamura Brace in January this year, seeking its support to make a new artificial leg for her.

Acting on the request, the company offered to shoulder the costs of making the new device and her travel to Japan, leading to her June 27 visit to the country.

Before wrapping up her three-week trip to Japan, Afifa told reporters she wants to return to college and become a medical doctor. "I want to take a job that can help other amputees."

"She will certainly encourage other handicapped people," Toshiro Nakamura, president of Nakamura Brace, said.