Download The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan now stands at more than 5,500 with close to 10,000 people still missing.
The cold weather, snow and limited food and water is making life awful for the estimated half-a-million people in evacuation centres.
Japan's Myagi prefecture is at the epicentre of the nation's post earthquake-tsunami suffering.
ABC correspondent Stephen McDonell is in Myagi prefecture and he filed this report via satellite phone.
Emergency helicopters fly up and down the coast of devastated Miyagi prefecture. They're keeping an eye out for any further tsunamis and dropping rescue workers into the worst hit areas.
On the ground, officials are keeping virtually anybody but rescue teams out of the coastal communities that have been flattened by these huge waves.
I'm walking around the streets of devastated Yamashita, where the police have started the grim task of looking for bodies.
They're going through these smashed up houses and every time they find a new body they bring a stretcher along and then they all bow and pray before taking the body out, placing it in a body bag, wrapping it up and then taking it away to a makeshift morgue.
There are still a few locals hanging around and retrieving things from what's left of their houses. We met 19-year-old Shohei Nezu.
He told me that he was asleep in front of the television when the tsunami hit.
Next thing, he was being churned around his lounge-room like he was caught in a giant washing machine. He somehow managed to get out of the window and swim through gushing waters to a nearby roof.
He says he feels very grateful to be alive today.
The authorities here remain on high alert. Aftershocks regularly occur and there are fears of more tsunamis.
The original waves clobbered this coastline, leaving many thousands of people dead. Just how many people have lost their lives might take a while to work out, given that bodies could be tangled amongst trees, buried under the mud or have been washed back out into the ocean.
Dusk in Miyagi prefecture makes for a pretty eerie scene. Where I'm standing, everything has been destroyed and there's really nobody around here.
About 400 metres down the road, a fleet of ambulances is driving out of an area. I can only assume that they're full of bodies of people who've drowned here.
Many of those who fled when the original tsunami warning went out have not yet had a chance to return to where they used to live. When they do, they could be shocked to see just how little remains of their former communities.
