Magnitude 6.1 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan | Hacker News Reader

Magnitude 6.1 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan

earthquake.usgs.gov

65 pointsLinuxBender22 comments

Is there something noteworthy about this specific incident? Faults of this magnitude are unfortunately relatively common. For example earlier this month there was a 6.2 quake not far from this one on the coast of the other side of Japan. I don't expect major damage or deaths, hopefully.

Exactly this.

This one was very close to Tokyo, which is arguably the largest city in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

The point is that's normal. They're used to these, and stuff's built for it. It's 1/1000th the strength of the one that made 2011's tsunami.

While there's a fatality (NHK in Japanese: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230526/k10014079771000.ht...), these events are pretty much "huh, that happened". It wasn't even the headliner on NHK's NewsWeb (https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/), sharing a slot with a relatively faraway Typhoon No. 2 (internationally known as Mawar).

(The last relatively-significant earthquake was on 5th May where an elderly person died but it was pretty much "that happened").

The news piece you linked seems to be about a Yakuza shooting in Machida, not about an earthquake?

Here in the west side of centeral Tokyo, the quake was long and definitely noticeable, but nothing out of ordinary. In Narita Airport, I hear it shaked pretty hard.

Arguably not a city but rather a metropolis with like 20 / 50 cities inside it (depending on how you view it).

Assuming no major aftershocks closer to the cities then hopefully it is a non-event. It was enough to trigger all of their audible alerts for the impending quake and enough for USGS to send me alerts.

AFAICT the JMA press release[^1] says this is just "Sagami Trough"[2] subduction, nothing out of the ordinary. It also mentions that between the two most-recent M8+ quakes (1703 and 1923), the recurrence time for ~M7 events was about 27 years.

[1]: https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/press/2305/26b/kaisetsu20230526210...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagami_Trough

Earthquakes are so common here in Japan that unless there is a death toll it doesn’t make sense to raise them as news.

It wasn't even the headliner on NHK's NewsWeb (https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/), but a relatively faraway Typhoon No. 2 (internationally known as Mawar) is featured instead. It's a nothing-burger in Japanese terms.

(this was edited to remove an unrelated article that I misread, as it was mentioned in a comment here is the link if you're interested: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230526/k10014079771000.ht...)

The NHK article you linked is about a death by shooting in Machida, and unrelated to this earthquake. There is an article about the earthquake from about four hours before that one was posted (https://www3.nhk.or.jp/shutoken-news/20230526/1000093005.htm...), though, and it doesn't mention deaths. That one was posted specifically in the section for Tokyo metro area (首都圏) news rather than national news, which does lend credence to the notion that fatality-less earthquakes don't garner much of a news cycle.

Just noticed that error, whoops. I shouldn't really post when this sleepy.

> a death by shooting in Machida

Now THAT's news in Japan!

The title seems to translate that it was a gang shooting? In Tokyo? What the heck??

> ...but a relatively faraway Typhoon No. 2 (internationally known as Mawar) is featured instead.

Relatively far away, but quite important given Guam is a very popular summer destination for Japanese tourists, and Mawar was a Category 4 super typhoon when it hit[1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/super-typhoon-m...

Time: 2023-05-26 10:03:24 (UTC)

Location: 35.518°N 140.519°E

Depth: 44.5 km

Preliminary impact data [1] appears to just cause mild shaking in Tokyo [2] and some alarms. Their early warning audible alerts are nice.

[1] - https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000k46f...

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TKuzVnssOc [video compilation][14 mins]

Just offshore from Kujūkuri Beach, it seems?

Looks very close to it.

Caution, it is extremely insensitive to play the EEW alert tone in public, in Japan. You will receive a near-hostile response. Don't do it. Watch those videos in private, or with headphones.

Is it any more insensitive than watching any video in public without headphones? Myself I wouldn't ever do that with any video to begin with, so no need to do it for specific videos. Seems just like plain common courtesy.

Yes, there is a difference between playing random noise and playing the sound of an emergency warning system.

Info on how it was felt across the area from the JMA:

https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eve...

It was quite noticeable in Tokyo and only 2 weeks after one of similar size nearby:

https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/quake/quake_detail.html?eve...

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