Japan natural disaster: Magnitude 6.5 hits off Japan’s southwest coast

The epicenter is believed to be about 100 miles southwest of Makurazaki, Japan, in the Pacific Ocean.

“We have not received any reports of injuries or damage following the quake and tsunami advisory”, Tetsuro Shinchi, an official with the Kagoshima prefectural government on Japan’s main island of Honshu, told AFP.

The agency said no tsunami was expected from Alaska to California as a result of the quake.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said waves of up to one metre (3ft) could hit the western coast of Kagoshima prefecture and Satsunan islands.

“Based on quake information and historic tsunami records, the natural disaster was not sufficient to generate a tsunami”, the warning center said in a statement.

Japan’s commercial reactors were shut down in May 2012, more than a year after a massive quake and tsunami struck Fukushima on March 11, 2011, causing the world’s biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.