Quake in Tokyo, 7:56 pm. Sizable.

Wow, that was probably the strongest earthquake we’ve felt in our Ikebukuro apartment, and the strongest temblor I recall for quite a long time. It may have been magnified by the fact that we’re fairly high up in a tall building, but still, that was sizable.

News reports mark it as being centered in the Pacific, just south of Shizuoka Prefecture, maybe only 30km off the coast–but it was pretty big, at a magnitude of 6.5 to 7.0 on the Richter scale. On the Japanese scale of 1 to 7, Central Tokyo was marked as a “4.” A 2 is barely noticeable, and a 3 is easily felt and relatively common.

But if that was a 4, I don’t want to feel a 6. Even a 5 would be pretty scary. This 4 was bad enough.

Update: The Bosai site is saying that there was a quake at 7:55 200 km south of the 7:56 quake which measured 7.5 on the Richter scale!

Now more sites are identifying the more southern epicenter.

Otherwise, the quake info looks strange–locations close to the quake felt is less strongly than many places 1-200 km more distant. Looking at the strength as felt on the ground, one would think that the quake was centered north-east of Tokyo.