AT THE once-bustling regional airport in Japan's Sendai city, a lone figure walks across a bridge inside the gutted terminal. Small planes jut out at awkward angles from the thick mud.

The devastation is absolute, revealing the utter force of the massive wall of water that struck Japan's north-east Pacific coast on Friday, following a 9.0-magnitude earthquake - one of the biggest ever recorded.

Clusters of beachfront houses were flattened and smashed into airport buildings - the modest wooden structures turned into flotsam in an instant after the twin natural disasters.

'We were expecting a major earthquake on the coast here and had put plans in place to protect lives, but the level of this calamity is beyond what we planned for,' says Sendai mayor Emiko Okuyama.

'It is extremely painful for me.' As far as the eye can see, the machinery of modern life has been crumpled nearly beyond recognition.

Cars were thrown everywhere, crushed by the swirling waves and then stuck incongruously into the few remaining structures, or balanced on top of huge piles of wooden debris that were once houses.