A strong earthquake struck areas in central Japan on Friday, killing at least one person and injuring 21 others, while relief teams are searching for a person stuck under the rubble following the collapse of a number of houses.

The 6.5-magnitude quake struck in the afternoon at a depth of 12 kilometers, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
And meteorologists warned citizens of the possibility of aftershocks or landslides in the coming days, but they ruled out the risk of a tsunami.

"There was a big tremor for a long time that lasted about two minutes. I was scared because the shaking didn't stop," a local government official in Suzu City, who asked not to be named, told state broadcaster NHK.

Government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters in Tokyo that one person was killed in the quake and that there were "many reports of building collapses."

The dead man fell after falling off a ladder, an official with the Suzhou Disaster Management Service told AFP, adding that 21 other people were injured.

The firefighting and crisis management services said that at least three buildings were destroyed, with two people trapped inside.

One of them was pulled from the rubble and taken to hospital, while paramedics searched for the other person.

Footage broadcast by NHK showed smashed or twisted traditional wooden houses, broken windows and damaged roofs. In one of the aerial views, the foot of a collapsed mountain can be seen.

Friday is an official holiday in Japan as part of what is known as "Golden Week" when a large number of people travel for entertainment or visit relatives.

Express trains between Nagano and Kanazawa, a popular tourist area, were halted, according to Japan Railways, and resumed after less than two hours.

The magnitude of the quake was 6 on the Japanese Shindo scale of 7.

The American Institute of Geophysics estimated the earthquake's strength at 6.2 degrees, saying that it struck close to the coast, but the Japanese Meteorological Agency determined its epicenter on land.

According to the Japanese minister in charge of managing earthquake disasters, Koichi Tani, there have been reports of landslides and some people resorting to shelters.

Japan is constantly exposed to earthquakes due to its location in the "Ring of Fire" in the Pacific Ocean, which is experiencing high seismic activity. This region extends from Southeast Asia to the Pacific basin.

However, Japan applies very strict building standards to ensure that buildings can withstand a strong earthquake, and often conducts emergency drills associated with a major earthquake.

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck a fishing village in the same area in 2007, injuring hundreds of people and damaging more than 200 buildings on the Noto Peninsula.

The peninsula is a rural area on the coast of the Sea of Japan, famous for its natural scenery.

Japan is haunted by the specter of the devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred under the sea off its northeastern coast in March 2011, which led to a tsunami that left 18,500 people dead or missing.

The tsunami in 2011 also resulted in the destruction of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima facility, causing the worst nuclear disaster in the post-war history of this country, and the most serious nuclear accident in the world since Chernobyl.

Matsuno confirmed to reporters that no abnormal indicators had been detected in the Shiga and Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facilities as a result of Friday's earthquake.