Miyagi:
Vast areas in Japan have been left unrecognisable by the devastation caused by Friday's quake and tsunami.
The coastline of Miyagi prefecture was one of the worst-hit regions.
Police estimated 10-thousand dead among the 2.3 million people who lived in the prefecture, the Japanese equivalent of a state.
South of Miyagis capital Sendai, near the epicenter of the quake, the village of Fujitsuka has completely submerged.
A massive search and rescue operation has been launched. But the rescue workers say it is hard to find survivors in the floodwaters left behind by the tsunami.
The town of Iwanuma took the full force of the tsunami.
Shuko Izawa returned to the wrecked town, about 210 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, after heard nothing from her elderly mother.
She had spent two days looking for her missing 99-year-old mother in government evacuation camps.
Now, in her mother's hometown, with so many homes flattened, she can't identify where the family home actually stood.
Asia's richest country hasn't seen such hardship since World War II.