In the Pacific coastal city of Ishinomaki, piles of old clothing, broken furniture and wooden debris still litter more than a dozen locations roughly eight months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Some of those dumping sites are covered, but most are laid bare with only limited space available to take further debris in the port city in Miyagi Prefecture.
Asao Utsumi, who lives in temporary housing near one of those sites, said, "When we moved in here in July, we suffered from an enormous number of flies.