A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck off northern Japan late Monday, triggering a tsunami of up to 27 inches in Pacific coast communities, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. A tsunami warning was lifted early Tuesday, according to the Kyodo news agency.

The quake struck at about 11:15 p.m. local time (9:15 a.m. EST) in the Pacific Ocean about 50 miles off the coast of Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Japan's main Honshu island, the agency said.

A tsunami of 70 centimeters (about 27 inches) was measured in Kuji port in Iwate prefecture, just south of Aomori, and tsunami levels of up to 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) struck other coastal communities in the region, the agency said.

The agency had issued an alert for potential tsunami surges of up to 10 feet in some areas. According to the Reuters news agency, the agency downgraded the tsunami warning to an advisory early Tuesday.

The quake struck northeast of the Aomori town of Hachinohe, and about 30 miles below the sea surface, the meteorological agency said. Hachinohe residents fled their homes to seek shelter in city hall, public broadcaster NHK said.

Several people were injured at a hotel in Hachinohe and a man in the town of Tohoku was slightly hurt when his car fell into a hole, NHK reported.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said nuclear power plants in the region were conducting safety checks and that so far no problems were detected.

Several cases of fires were reported in Aomori, and about 90,000 residents were advised to take shelter at evacuation centers, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

Satoshi Kato, a vice principal of a public high school in Hachinohe, told NHK that he was at home when the quake struck, and that glasses and bowls fell and smashed into shards on the floor.

Kato said he drove to the school because it was designated an evacuation center, and on the way he encountered traffic jams and car accidents as panicked people tried to flee. Nobody had yet come to the school to take shelter, he said. 

The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami danger for the U.S. West Coast, Canada's British Columbia or Alaska.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in brief comments to reporters, said the government set up an emergency task force to urgently assess the extent of damage. "We are putting people's lives first and doing everything we can," she said.

The quake was also felt in the northern hub of Sapporo, where alarms rang on smartphones to alert residents.

A reporter for NHK in Hokkaido described a horizontal shaking of around 30 seconds that made him unable to keep standing as the earthquake struck.

Japan sits on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and is one of the world's most tectonically active countries.

The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, experiences around 1,500 jolts every year.

The vast majority are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to their location and depth below the Earth's surface.