About 1,200 children in the coastal town of Hirokawa in Wakayama Prefecture conducted a tsunami evacuation drill on Wednesday to mark tsunami awareness day.
Each year, Nov. 5 recalls the lessons of the Great Ansei Nankai Earthquake of 1854, when a tsunami wave struck swaths of the Kii Peninsula and Shikoku Island. Hirokawa was among the communities damaged by the huge waves.
The drill, which included children from day care centers and elementary and junior high schools, was based on a scenario in which a magnitude-9.1 earthquake had struck offshore along the Nankai Trough, triggering a 10-meter tsunami wave.