As more rain fell Thursday on flood-stricken Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture, residents who had been scraping mud away from their homes and businesses had to abandon the effort.
The fresh downpour came on the heels of a disaster that left at least eight people dead and evicted more than 3,000 a week ago as water surged through a broken levee along the Kinugawa River and raged through homes and businesses, sweeping away some buildings and toppling trees.
In Mitsukaidosuwa, one of the flood-hit neighborhoods in Joso, resident Akira Umezawa, 81, had just put some tatami out to dry by an apartment building when the rain began to fall.