Shigeru Igarashi, a 57-year-old living in Tokyo's suburbs, returned to Kashiwazaki to care for his 91-year-old mother, bringing her to a school that was turned into a relief shelter.

But he regretted that the shelters all have Japanese-style squat toilets, not the Western-style ones which most Japanese have grown accustomed to in recent years.

"She is on a wheelchair and the makeshift restrooms here are only Japanese style, so going to the loo is pretty hard work," said Igarashi, looking anxiously at his sleeping mother.

Hundreds of soldiers have been called out to help with the relief efforts, handing out necessities such as food, water and blankets.

But for one 33-year-old who was at the shelter, what he needed most was his medication. He said he was undergoing treatment for psychological problems and vomited because of the stress of life around so many people.

"I take medicine prescribed by a hospital, but since the quake I haven't been able to take it. My drugs are under the rubble in our house," he said with a worried look. "I wonder if I'll be able to see my doctor soon."

Monday's 6.8 Richter-scale earthquake killed nine people and injured more than 1,000 more as it turned hundreds of homes into piles of debris.

It was the deadliest earthquake in tremor-prone Japan since October 2004 when a jolt of the same magnitude hit the same prefecture of Niigata.

In that quake, most of the victims died in the days and weeks after the quake from fatigue and stress.

In the latest quake, Yoshio Nakagawa, 79, and his wife Misao, 77, had to abandon their house after a local government expert ruled that it was dangerous to stay in.

"I feel a bit sad leaving the house I lived in since childhood," he said.

"We don't have a place to return to. We were thinking of staying in our son's house in the city, but his house is also dangerous with cracks made by the quake," he said.

Misao said she wouldn't want a new house built on their land, joking, "There aren't many days remaining in our lives."

In Kariwa village, which is near a massive nuclear plant which leaked in the earthquake, many elderly people were sent to a shelter by their children who believed it was safer than staying at home.

"Our house is somehow still standing, but inside it's a huge mess and our children told us to stay here," said a 80-year-old woman who introduced herself only as Mrs. Oniyama.

Next to her, 85-year-old Mr. Oniyama was lying on a bedcloth they brought from home.

She said that she suffered heart disease and her husband was a diabetic, but that the only clinic in the village was closed due to earthquake damage.

"This old man keeps saying he wants to go home," she sighed about her husband. "But there's nothing we can do. We'd only be a nuisance to the younger people who are struggling to tidy up our house."

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