James "Weston" Higginbotham, an Auburn University student and environmentalist, disappeared while exploring Kyoto alone during a family trip.
Surveillance footage captured him near hiking trails in a mountainous area before he vanished.
His family has launched its own search efforts after Japanese police concluded a 72-hour official search.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
The parents of an American college student missing in Japan are not giving up on finding their son, even after they say police finished searching the dense forest he was spotted walking toward more than a week ago.
