Japan hit by massive 6.8 quake, no significant damage or injuries

A large quake of magnitude 6.8 struck northeast Japan this morning, but seems to have caused no significant damage or injuries, thanks to the country's excellent building standards and preparedness for large quakes.
No tsunami alert was issued - fortunately, the quake was too deep and the mechanism of the faulting that occurred did not trigger any significant waves.
Along a 100 km stretch of the coast near Sendai, people experienced strong shaking (VI on the Mercalli scale). Beyond the area of strong shaking, it was felt more lightly in up to several hundreds km distance, over large parts of Japan. Our monitoring service received numerous reports from people all over Honshu who felt it within minutes after the quake struck. Most people described horizontal ground movements that lasted 10-20 seconds, depending on the distance from the epicenter, suggesting that it was mainly the secondary (side-wise swinging) earthquake waves that reached the country's interior.
Especially central eastern Honshu, large earthquakes are no strangers: Today's quake occurred only 40 km SE of the magnitude 7 earthquake on 20 March this year, a similar one in February, and 70 km west of the catastrophic Tohoku quake on 11 March 2011, infamous for the large tsunami and following nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

Japan's bullet train (Shinkansen) services were temporarily suspended throughout northern Japan, in order to check for possible damages to the rail systems by the quake. As of time of this update, the services in Kanto and Tohoku areas are still on hold. For updated information, please visit the website of the East Japan Rail website.
Some power plants and oil processing refineries shot down temporarily as precaution as well, but reported no damages and have been restarting their operations.

Earthquake data:
Date & time: 1 May 10:27 am (GMT +9) local time (1 May 2021 01:27 GMT)
Magnitude: 6.8
Depth: 61.0 km
Epicenter latitude / longitude: 38.2°N / 141.6°E (North Pacific Ocean, Japan)
Primary data source: GFZ