A pre-dawn earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 jolted the Tokyo region on Wednesday, injuring at least 27 people and disrupting early morning transport.
No major damage was reported, officials said.
Most injuries were caused by falls, including a 68-year-old woman who broke her arm and a 62-year-old man injured when he fell down stairs in his home, media reports said. At least 27 people had been hurt, public broadcaster NHK said.
The focus of the quake was 40 km (25 miles) below the surface in Ibaraki prefecture, just north of Tokyo and near the capital’s Narita international airport, though flights were unaffected.
Television pictures showed items that had fallen from shelves in 24-hour convenience stores. Some 8,000 videos and CDs were scattered on the floor of a video rental store.
Services on one rail line were suspended for safety checks and others operated at reduced speed for a short time after the quake, officials said.
Delays continued into the morning rush hour.
There was no impact on nuclear power plants or oil refineries in the area, authorities and company officials said.
“The shaking from side to side lasted for about 20 to 30 seconds,” said a reporter for public broadcaster NHK, speaking from Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo.
The quake, which shook many people in the capital awake at 4:46 a.m. (1946 GMT), was measured by the Japan Meteorological Agency according to a technique similar to the Richter scale but adjusted for Japan’s geological characteristics.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing about 40 people and injuring more than 3,000.
That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremor hit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6,400.
