A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Honshu, Japan on Saturday morning, and a tsunami advisory was issued for the Fukushima coast.
The earthquake was “felt from Hokkaido in the north all the way to Kyushu in the south,” reported Mark Willacy, the north Asia correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“It was really strong in Tokyo,” said Zach Kuhn, an expat living in Tokyo, via Twitter. “Shook my building wildly.”
Kuhn said that “most buildings shook in Tokyo,” and that “friends woke up if they were sleeping, and people seemed frightened.”
A tsunami advisory was initially issued for the Fukushima prefecture by the Japan Meteorological Agency, and was later expanded to the Iwate, Miyagi, and Ibaraki prefectures, and the Kujukuri and Sotobo Area, Chiba prefecture.
However, only small waves, around one feet high, hit several areas. The agency has since canceled all tsunami advisories.
“It was fairly big, and rattled quite a bit, but nothing fell to the floor or broke. We’ve had quakes of this magnitude before,” said Satoshi Mizuno, an official with the Fukushima prefectural government’s disaster management department. “Luckily, the quake’s center was very far off the coast.”
The quake hit 10 kilometers deep (6.2 miles). It was previously registered as 7.3 magnitude on the Richter scale, but later pegged at 7.1 by both the U.S. and Japan.
There were no immediate reports of damage on land. Japanese television images of harbors showed calm waters. The quake hit at 2:10 a.m. Tokyo time (1710 GMT) about 290 kilometers (170 miles) off Fukushima, and it was felt in Tokyo, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) away.
The time in Japan is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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