Hopes of locating survivors are fast fading, six days after a magnitude-7.6 New Year's Day earthquake killed at least 128 people and injured 560, with the safety of another 195 still unaccounted for.
But rescue teams received a morale boost on Jan 6, when they miraculously located an elderly woman in her 90s alive but with a weak pulse in the rubble of a collapsed home some 124 hours after the tremor.
By Jan 7, she was able to respond clearly to questions, and a police official told public broadcaster NHK: "What happened today can well happen again tomorrow, and so all of us will do our best to search without giving up."
Rescue teams, including the police, firefighters and military SelfDefence Forces (SDF) which mobilised from across the country, have gathered on the Noto Peninsula to find survivors in a race against time, terrain and the elements.
The Straits Times entered Wajima on Jan 7 from the Ishikawa Prefecture capital of Kanazawa, on a road journey that took twice the two hours it would usually have.
The Noto Peninsula, which has been described as an "island on land", juts out into the Sea of Japan (which South Korea calls the East Sea).
The tranquil, pastoral landscape of central Wajima, which was a key hub of what had once been the Noto Province during the samurai era and famous for a 1,000-year-old morning market, a tradition of lacquerware, and centuries-old wooden buildings, has been reduced to ash and rubble.
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