The US Geological Survey said a 7.3 magnitude earthquake hit the eastern coast of Japan dawn Saturday. However, no immediate reports of damage were sustained on land. Fifteen-inch tsunamis were seen along some areas in the coast but the tsunami advisory was lifted in less than two hours.

Satoshi Mizuno told the Associated Press in a phone interview, "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. Luckily, the quake's center was very far off the coast." Mizuno works for the disaster management department of the Fukushima prefecture. The epicenter of the earthquake was 170 miles off Fukushima.

In the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan sustained damages of up to JPY 25 trillion or USD 309 billion. According to a Bloomberg report, this was four times the damage caused when Hurricane Katrina hit the US. Katrina. The amount covered the destruction of infrastructure in the seven prefectures that got severely hit as well as that sustained by the nuclear power plants at Fukushima.