<p>Tokyo: An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 hit southern Japan late on Wednesday, said the Japan Meteorological Agency, without issuing a tsunami warning.</p><p>The epicentre was the Bungo Channel, a strait separating the Japanese islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, the agency said.</p><p>Ehime and Kochi prefectures were hit by the quake with an intensity of 6 on Japan's 1-7 scale, the JMA said.</p>.Earthquake of 6 magnitude strikes off Japan's Honshu: EMSC .<p>Some water pipes burst, but no major damage has been reported, local media said.</p><p>Shikoku Electric Power's Ikata nuclear plant in Ehime prefecture, where one reactor is in operation, reported no irregularities, Japan's government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.</p><p>Hayashi also warned of a chance of other earthquakes with lower six on the Japanese seismic scale.</p><p>Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. Japan accounts for about one-fifth of world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.</p><p>On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami. Those events triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier. </p>
<p>Tokyo: An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 hit southern Japan late on Wednesday, said the Japan Meteorological Agency, without issuing a tsunami warning.</p><p>The epicentre was the Bungo Channel, a strait separating the Japanese islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, the agency said.</p><p>Ehime and Kochi prefectures were hit by the quake with an intensity of 6 on Japan's 1-7 scale, the JMA said.</p>.Earthquake of 6 magnitude strikes off Japan's Honshu: EMSC .<p>Some water pipes burst, but no major damage has been reported, local media said.</p><p>Shikoku Electric Power's Ikata nuclear plant in Ehime prefecture, where one reactor is in operation, reported no irregularities, Japan's government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.</p><p>Hayashi also warned of a chance of other earthquakes with lower six on the Japanese seismic scale.</p><p>Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. Japan accounts for about one-fifth of world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.</p><p>On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami. Those events triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier. </p>