THE mother of a Melbourne man found alive and well in earthquake-ravaged Sendai says she is relieved he is safe but still wants him home.
Jason Briffa finally got a message to his family last night that he was safe following Friday's earthquake and tsunami, and had sought shelter in a village nearby.
Mary Briffa said she was upset at the lack of official communication in trying to locate the 25-year-old teacher.
"Obviously I'm happy, but I would still like to talk to him and find out how he is," she said.
"He's still in a place where there is no food or electricity. I've been waiting to hear some good news, and it took his employer to ring me and tell me he was OK. DFAT still don't know what's going on."
Ms Briffa said she had emailed her son's employer, Denis Cusack, out of desperation, and he had phoned to tell her Jason was helping locals in the village where he had found shelter.
"That's how I found out -- he rang. I was taken by surprise, and all I heard was Jason is OK, he's fine. I blocked out everything else, I just heard the important thing."
Mr Cusack said problems with phone lines had prevented Jason from contacting his family.
"Obviously the phone lines have been down most of the time since Friday but he was able to get a signal and he called us," he told the ABC.
"His telephone was running low on battery but he said he was at the Murata high school, and he's been helping locals with the clean-up for the past two days."
The Point Cook English teacher was in Sendai when the tsunami took everything in its path.
His mother never gave up hope that he was alive. "I thought either he lost his phone or it was completely dead, and he's probably out helping other people because that's the sort of person he is," she said.
"He's very soft-hearted, he tries to help everybody, so he might be out helping others and that's why he might not be able to get in contact with me . . . The area he's in, he probably doesn't have anything going at the moment."
Earlier, Ms Briffa said she had heard nothing from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about her son and became increasingly frustrated.
"I feel the government doesn't do enough, or if they are doing things they're not letting people know . . . which is not very helpful."
Ms Briffa said she and her sister both rang DFAT, but officials called back only after reading about her son in the paper.
A Sydney woman, who also read about him, told Ms Briffa her sister in Sendai would search for her son in the disaster zone.
"She said she would physically go out and have a look for him today and get back to me," Ms Briffa said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd said his department was working with the Japanese authorities to find all missing Australians, including Mr Briffa.