By Jonathan Head BBC Correspondent in Tokyo

Lucie Blackman disappeared while working as a hostess

On Sunday mornings, if I'm up early enough, I'm treated to an exotic parade in my neighbourhood.

A constant stream of impossibly tall, long-legged women, many with long blonde hair, walking back from work in Roppongi, which is just ten minutes' walk away.

The hostess business where wealthy Japanese men pay to take model-like foreign women out on dates - is still alive and kicking in Tokyo.

Which made the visit this week of Tim and Sophie Blackman all the more poignant.

Family's return

They had not been back to Japan since March 2001.

That was when they had the grueling task of bringing the remains of Lucie Blackman, Tim's eldest daughter and Sophie's sister back to Britain.

Her dismembered body had been discovered in a cave on the coast south of Tokyo the month before.

She had gone missing in July 2000, while working as a hostess in Roppongi.

The case exposed disturbing aspects of Tokyo's sleazy underworld, and the reluctance of the authorities to acknowledge its existence.

Tim, property developer from the Isle of Wight and Sophie, had to mount a personal campaign in Japan before the police took Lucie's disappearance seriously.

The police bungled the investigation.

Family coming to terms

The main suspect, Joji Obara was not arrested until three months later, despite a wealth of circumstantial evidence against him.

The police found 200 videos of Obara apparently raping women he had drugged.

When they eventually found Lucie's body just a few hundred meters from Obara's apartment, it was too badly decomposed to reveal any forensic evidence.

Obara's trial has been bogged down by procedural problems.

I'm really surprised how we feel more pity for this individual, rather than anger or emotion Tim Blackman

Tim Blackman remains very calm and philosophical about all this.

"The last two and a half years", he said, "have allowed the family to come to terms with Lucie's death.

"It has been a long time", he said, "and that has allowed us to understand losing Lucie, and to get our strength back from the ordeal of the eight months looking for her".

He accepts Japan's judicial process must now be allowed to take its course.

He is grateful for the help and sensitive support he now gets from the police, and the dedication of the prosecutors to winning their case.

He, his partner Jo Burr and Sophie laugh and joke a lot while they are here, determined not to wear the tragedy on their sleeves.

But you have to wonder what it's costing them.

Shrine to Lucie

It showed down on the beach at Miura, where they revisited the cave, now a makeshift shrine to Lucie maintained by local residents.

Police seal off the cave at Misaki in the Miura region of Japan

We stayed back as the three of them laid flowers, and drank a champagne toast to Lucie, sitting on a rock in brilliant autumn sunshine.

As he walked out of the cave, even at that distance, I could see the grief written all over Tim Blackman's face.

"But coming back has been helpful", he says.

"Especially going to court, getting a feel for the stiff formalities of Japan's judicial processes, and for the first time, seeing Joji Obara, sitting just a few meters away.

"It's been playing on our minds, coming back on this trip", he said right after the hearing.

"I expected a nervous reaction.

"But I'm really surprised how we feel more pity for this individual, rather than anger or emotion".

Rape and drug charges

Throughout the hearing, Joji Obara, his face masked behind owlish tinted glasses, avoided looking at the Blackmans.

Dressed in a crumpled suit, a tieless white shirt, his hair grey and thinning, with a scraggly beard, he cut a wretched figure, incessantly fumbling with a pile of documents he had brought in.

He faces charges of drugging and raping Lucie Blackman and nine other women, after taking them on dates from clubs in Roppongi.

Months of court

The trial of Joji Obara could still take many more months to conclude. Court sessions are only held once a month.

Japan's judges rely heavily on confessions to conclude cases quickly - 90% of convictions are based on confessions. But Obara is pleading innocent to all charges.

Still, Tim Blackman wants to come back as often as he can.

"There have been very difficult bits of the trip", he told me, "but as part of the healing process, as part of seeing this whole, terrible tragedy through to the end, I think it's been very productive".