In a recent poll of people in the March 2011 disaster-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima who moved to public housing for survivors, nearly half said they feel that interactions with neighbors have decreased since they moved to the housing complexes from temporary accommodation and other places.
The results, released in March, show that survivors are feeling lonely having moved away from the place where they had settled.
In the survey, conducted by Kyodo News in December on 100 survivors in the prefectures, 45 respondents felt interaction with neighbors had declined, while 42 people felt it was unchanged and 13 thought it had actually increased.