A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan's northeast region prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate.
The Japan Meteorological Agency says a tsunami as high as 3 metres could hit Japan's northeastern coast after the earthquake struck at 3.15 (NZT) this morning.
They say tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and tsunamis from 20cm to 70cm high were observed at several ports.
The epicentre of the quake was 80 km off the coast of Aomori prefecture, at a depth of 50 km, the agency added.
The Radio New Zealand reports on Japan's 1-7 scale of seismic intensity, the tremor registered as an "upper 6" in Aomori prefecture - a quake strong enough to make it impossible to keep standing or move without crawling.
In such tremors, most heavy furniture can collapse and wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged in many buildings.
Public broadcaster NHK cited a hotel employee in the city of Hachinohe in Aomori as saying there had been some injuries, with live footage showing shattered glass fragments scattered across roads, AFP reported.
The quake was also felt in the northern hub of Sapporo, where alarms rang on smartphones to alert residents.
A reporter for NHK in Hokkaido described a horizontal shaking of around 30 seconds that made him unable to keep standing as the earthquake struck.
East Japan Railway suspended some services in the area, which was also hit by the massive 9.0-magnitude quake in March 2011.
No irregularities were reported at nuclear power plants in the region run by Tohoku Electric Power and Hokkaido Electric Power, the utilities said. Tohoku Electric did say, however, that thousands were without power.
Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, with a tremor occurring at least every five minutes.
Located in the "Ring of Fire" of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater.
The northeastern region suffered one of the country's deadliest earthquakes on 11 March 2011, when a 9.0-magnitude tremor struck under the ocean off the coast of the northern city of Sendai.
It was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan and set off a series of massive tsunami that devastated a wide swathe of the Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000 people.
The 2011 tsunami also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, leading to a series of explosions and meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear disaster for 25 years.
Source:RNZ
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