Cars manoeuvre through floodwaters on a road in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture, yesterday. Heavy rain is expected to spread across a wide area of Japan today after a typhoon made landfall in the southwest of the country.
TOKYO: Tornados hit eastern Japan yesterday, tearing off roofs, shattering windows and injuring at least three people, while a strong 6.5 magnitude earthquake shook buildings.
Television footage showed badly damaged houses in Yaita, around 100 kilometres north of Tokyo, some with their roofs peeled off.
A 60-year-old man was slightly injured in Yaita.
Similar gusts hit nearby Kanuma city, injuring at least two men, a local police spokesman said.
About 600 households lost power for around three hours in Yaita city, said Tokyo Electric Power, which covers the region.
The weather agency said at least one tornado had torn through Yaita.
More than 60 buildings were partially damaged or totally destroyed in wider Tochigi prefecture, the local authority said.
The quake struck at 0018 GMT at a depth of 404 kilometres.
“The epicentre is in the Pacific, hundreds of kilometres south of Tokyo. We see no risk of a tsunami,” a spokesman for the Japanese weather agency said.
The quake, measured at 6.9 by Japanese seismologists, was centred on a spot more than 600km south of Tokyo, the US Geological Survey said.
Journalists in the Japanese capital reported feeling a long, rumbling quake that shook buildings. They said it was the largest they had felt in the city for some time.
AFP
