The 7.2-magnitude quake on late Thursday was the strongest tremor since the March 11 jumbo and did some damage, but it appeared to have spared the area's nuclear power plants. The Fukushima Dai-ichi complex — where workers have been frantically trying to cool overheated reactors since they lost cooling systems last month — reported no new abnormalities.

The quake initiated a tsunami warning of its own, but it was later canceled. Two people were killed, fire department spokesman Junichi Sawada reported Friday. More than 130 people were injured, according to the national police agency.

The temblor's epicenter was in about the same location as the March 11 tremor, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) from Sendai, an industrial city on the eastern coast, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was strong enough to shake buildings as far away as Tokyo, about 200 miles (330 kilometers) from the epicenter.

Matsuko Ito, who has been living in a shelter in Natori since the tsunami, said there's no getting used to the terror of being awoken by shaking.

Many people in the area have lived without water and electricity for nearly a month, and the latest tremor sunk more homes into blackness: In total, around 3.6 million households — about 60 percent of residents in the area — were dark Friday, said Souta Nozu, a spokesman for Tohoku-Electric Power Co., which serves northern Japan.

AP