Two big questions arise here. First, why are there so many earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan? Second, how does Japan deal with these disasters? Because if an earthquake of the same magnitude had hit any other country, perhaps, thousands of people would have lost their lives. The d3ath toll in Japan is below 100 as of now. How does Japan protect itself against such circumstances?
The earthquake that just hit Japan is named the 2024 Sea of Japan earthquake or the Noto Peninsula earthquake. There’s a region called the Noto Peninsula in Japan. You have read about peninsulas in school. It is a piece of land surrounded by water on three sides. The epic center of this earthquake was located here. The Sea of Japan, in the west of the country. It is 500 km away from Tokyo, Japan’s capital. But even so, this earthquake was felt in Tokyo.
Now, our first question is, why do so many earthquakes take place in Japan? The answer to this is hidden in the map. This is the Earth’s 16 major tectonic plates. Tectonic plates are the outer-most layer of the Earth, made up of the Earth’s crust and the upper part of the mantle. The heat that is generated in Earth’s core, releases convection currents which causes the tectonic plates to move slowly. These are the 16 main tectonic plates that move slowly year after year. When they collide with each other, earthquakes happen.
