Two powerful earthquakes struck the north-east of the Indonesian Maluku islands and Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, which triggers tsunami warnings.
The first, which had a magnitude of 6.6, occurred at 0902 (0002 GMT) about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the city of Ternate, the U.S. Geological Survey.
A few minutes later, a magnitude of 7.2 earthquake struck the coast of Hokkaido, 220 km (135 miles) east of the capital, Sapporo.
It has so far been no reports of casualties from both countries. The Japanese Meteorological Agency issued a warning for a 50 cm (20 inch) tsunami along the east coast of Hokkaido and the north-east, main island of Honshu.
A tsunami is formed when the energy of an earthquake shaking vertically seabed by several metres, displacing a large volume of water. An earthquake off the coast of Indonesia triggered the tsunami in Asia 2004, which killed about 220000 people across the Indian Ocean.
The Indonesia and Japan are both the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the most seismically active regions.
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