None of the 1,000-plus Taiwanese tourists visiting Hokkaido were hurt in the strong earthquake that rocked the northern Japanese island early yesterday, Tourism Bureau officials said.
Local travel agents said that as the quake struck before dawn, all the tourists were in their hotels and thus avoided the dangers of falling objects outside.
Quoting information provided by major tourism associations, the officials said more than 1,000 Taiwanese are on sightseeing trips in Hokkaido. From Taipei alone, there are 20 tour groups, comprising more than 600 people.
Nearly all tour-group leaders have informed their travel agents in Taipei that their group members were not hurt in the magnitude-8 earthquake, the officials said.
The Seismic Observation Center at the Central Weather Bureau said that two earthquakes that hit Ilan county's Nanao township yesterday were unrelated to the Hokkaido quake.
According to Chang Chien-hsin, (張建興), an observation center official, the first temblor, measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale, occurred at 7:42am. The second, measuring 4.6, happened at 3:37pm.
The Central Weather Bureau said that the Ilan earthquakes and the Hokkaido earthquake originated from separate tectonic plate movements.
Earthquakes in Taiwan usually result from the collisions of the Philippine and Eurasian tectonic plates, while Hokkaido's earthquake resulted from the collision of the Pacific and Eurasian tectonic plates, the bureau said.
"Earthquakes happen every day. Most of the time, you can't feel them. A 4.9 magnitude earthquake is pretty common. We would actually be more worried if these earthquakes were not periodically occurring in Taiwan," Chang said.
According to the bureau, the northeastern region of Taiwan will usually see two to four magnitude-6 earthquakes each year, about one 5.5-magnitude earthquake each month, and one 4.9-magnitude earthquake each week.
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