Roiling water swept away homes, highways and the cars driving on them as waves 10 metres high hit the country's northeastern Pacific coast after the magnitude 8.9 quake, the biggest in nearly a century and a half.
The tsunami, black with soil and thick with debris, some of it ablaze, submerged farmland near the coastal city of Sendai, and television images showed upended cars bobbing up and down in the water. Boats were floating in an inland sea.
The quake rattled skyscrapers in Tokyo further south, where the streets around the main train station were packed with commuters stranded after buses and trains were halted.
"It was probably the worst I have felt since I came to Japan more than 20 years ago," said Reuters journalist Linda Sieg.
"The building shook for what seemed a long time and many people in the newsroom grabbed their helmets and some got under their desks," she said.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater and on average, an eartquake occurs every 5 minutes.
But Friday's quake, coming a few weeks after New Zealand's city of Christchurch was devastated by a strong earthquake, was petrifying.
"I was terrified and I'm still frightened," said Hidekatsu Hata, 36, manager of a Chinese noodle restaurant in Tokyo's Akasaka area. "I've never experienced such a big quake before."
"People were very frightened. Very rare since people in Japan are used to quakes. Today was very different," Reuters Insider reporter Kei Okamura posted on Twitter.
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