The tsunami alert, issued within minutes of last week's earthquake, didn't seem terribly ominous. But by the time it was lifted, fishing boats had been tossed ashore, coastal towns flooded.
Though Japan's tsunami warning system is among the best in the world, even it came up woefully short in predicting what to expect from the magnitude 8.0 quake that rocked the northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 26.
Measurements taken near Erimo, a town on Hokkaido's southeastern tip, indicate that waves reached 4 meters high, said Fumihiko Imamura, a professor at Tohoku University's Disaster Control Research Center.