- The meteorological agency records two tsunami waves of 40 centimeters.
- A tsunami is expected to hit Japan’s Pacific coast, meteorologists say.
- Images show fragments of broken glass strewn across the roads.
A major earthquake shook Japan’s northern coast on Monday, with the country’s weather agency recording two 40-centimeter tsunami waves and local media reporting injuries.
The United States Geological Survey said the 7.6-magnitude quake struck at 1415 GMT off Misawa, on Japan’s Pacific coast, at a depth of 53 kilometers (33 miles).
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning, with the first wave hitting a port in the northern Aomori region, where Misawa is located, at 11:43 a.m. (2:43 p.m. GMT).
At 11:50 p.m., another wave reached the city of Urakawa in the Hokkaido region, the agency said.
The two waves measured 40 centimeters (16 inches), it is added.
Public broadcaster NHK a hotel worker in Aomori’s Hachinohe town was quoted as saying there were some injuries, with live footage showing fragments of broken glass strewn across the roads.
The earthquake was also felt in north central Sapporo, where alarms sounded on smartphones to alert residents.
A journalist for NHK in Hokkaido described a horizontal shaking lasting about 30 seconds that left him unable to stand when the earthquake struck.
The weather agency had earlier warned that a tsunami of up to three meters (10 feet) could hit Japan’s Pacific coast.
Japan sits atop four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and is one of the most tectonically active countries in the world.
The archipelago, which is home to around 125 million people, experiences around 1,500 tremors each year.
The vast majority are benign, although the damage they cause varies depending on their location and depth below the Earth’s surface.
