Emergency vehicles are parked on a partially submerged road during a rescue operation in Joso, Japan, today. Rescue workers searched for missing people after raging floodwaters washed away houses.

JOSO, Japan — Floods may fill your house with mud, but at least it’s standing and you’re alive.

“It’s still here!” said 34-year-old Chie Takahashi, one of the first residents to return to her heavily damaged neighborhood today, a day after a swollen river poured into the city of Joso. “I was afraid the house might have been washed away, because this area looked totally wiped out when I saw it on TV.”

The devastated Misaka neighborhood is one of the worst-hit sections of Joso, a city of 60,000 people about 30 miles northeast of Tokyo. Houses were tilted and half submerged, concrete walls torn down, and a road ruptured. A row of utility poles leaned at an angle, and traffic signals lay on the ground.

Two days of torrential rain caused flooding and landslides across much of Japan this week. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said three people died — a woman in her 60s found after a landslide hit houses in Kanuma city, a woman in her 40s in a car that washed away in Kurihara city, and a man in his 20s who fell into a drainage ditch in Nikko.

Another river overflowed this morning into Osaki, about 190 miles north of Joso, swamping homes and fields and stranding at least 60 people.

But the hardest-hit place appeared to be Joso, where the fast-rising water led to a series of dramatic rescues by helicopters.

As the sun returned and the water subsided, some Misaka residents came back to find serious scars.

There was no electricity or water supply in the neighborhood, but a power shovel was already clearing chunks of asphalt, broken pieces of concrete and other debris at the end of the ruptured road. Anything above water was caked in mud.