One of the largest earthquakes in recorded history struck off the coast of Japan on Friday causing a number of tsunamis to tear through coastal cities across the country. The Kyodo News Agency in Japan estimates that the death toll will top 1,000 and the costs to recover could reach the hundreds of billions of dollars. However, as a country that sees frequent earthquakes, Japan was uniquely positioned to withstand the disaster and some say that the death toll of the 8.9-magnitude quake would have been closer to 10,000 anywhere else.
Japan's technological sophistication also meant that videos and photos shot and uploaded from mobile phones surfaced on the Internet almost immediately after the shaking stopped. We've collected some of the best photos both from photojournalists and citizen journalists.
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