Shinkansen bullet train services disrupted in the wake of a powerful earthquake that struck northeastern Japan last weekend will be mostly resumed from the first train on Wednesday, operator East Japan Railway Co. said Friday.
The resumption will come 10 days after the magnitude-7.3 temblor, which struck at 11:07 p.m. Saturday, damaged electricity poles and bridges on the Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train line connecting the region with Tokyo.
JR East said it will run the high-speed trains throughout its tracks from Wednesday morning but the total number of the trains will be limited to roughly two-thirds of the normal for a month or so because they have to slow down in parts that were recently repaired.
The quake, which caused power and water outages across a wide area, damaged 2,649 houses across Fukushima, Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.
It also caused injuries to 185 people in the 10 prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa, the agency said.
While a tsunami did not occur, the earthquake came just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the magnitude-9.0 quake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan in March 2011, leaving more than 15,000 people dead and triggering the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Following last Saturday's temblor, which registered upper 6 on Japan's seismic intensity scale of 7, around 80 earthquakes with seismic centers off the coast of Fukushima have been felt as of Friday, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
It included a quake in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, last Sunday that had a seismic intensity of 4.
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