Every afternoon, elderly residents at a temporary housing complex in the city of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, sit around a table for a few hours of lighthearted chitchat. They update each other on how they feel, talk about TV shows they saw the night before and laugh at each other's jokes.

But once the gathering ends, they each retreat to their own dimly lit, thin-walled quarters in the Mangokuura district complex and spend the remaining hours of the day feeling uncertain about the future.

"For those brief hours that we come together and engage in conversation, we can forget what is on our minds," said a tsunami survivor in his 70s who lives in this complex.