TOKYO : Japan issued a tsunami warning and urged coastal residents to head to higher ground after a massive 8.3-magnitude quake in the Pacific Ocean Saturday, the meteorological agency said.

Waves as high as one metre (three feet) were expected to reach the coast of northern Hokkaido around 2:00pm (0500 GMT) and also to hit the Pacific coast on the main island of Honshu, the agency said.

No major waves had been observed by early afternoon.

The quake, in the northwestern Pacific, at 0424 GMT, was felt in Hokkaido, but there were no immediate reports of damage.

The agency urged residents to head to higher ground, a warning passed on by local authorities as well as national network Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

NHK broadcast live footage from various ports in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, and other coastal areas before and after the expected time of the tsunami's arrival.

The United States issued a tsunami warning for Russia, Japan and Markus Island in the Pacific Ocean following the quake.

Coastal villages and municipalities under tsunami warnings issued evacuation warnings and advisories to thousands of households.

In Tokyo, the government set up a special communication office to collect information about the possible tsunami.

The Pacific coast of Wakayama prefecture in central Japan was expecting a 50 centimetre (1.6 feet) tsunami around 4:00pm (0700 GMT), the agency said.

Japan is home to 20 percent of the world's major earthquakes, frequently jolting its cities.

Japan last saw a tsunami on November 15 in the north of the country, after a 7.9-magnitude quake in the northern Pacific Ocean northeast of Japan, which triggered alerts stretching from Indonesia to California.

But the biggest of a series of tsunamis to hit Japan was just 40 centimetres high.

Japan prides itself on having one of the world's most accurate systems for assessing earthquakes and predicting tsunamis.

It helped share information with other countries after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 that killed some 220,000 people, 168,000 of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh. - AFP/ch