As fears of ‘megaquake’ spread in Japan, authorities urge people to avoid stockpiling consumer goods

Japanese authorities are calling for people not to stockpile or “to make excessive reserves” consumer goods, Saturday August 10, while the concern raised by the occurrence of a possible “megaseism” has caused a surge in demand. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has urged the population to “avoid making excessive reserves” of basic consumer goods, in a message published on the social network X on Friday.

“Prepare a three-day (preferably a week) supply per person”the ministry advised. On Saturday, a sign was posted at a Tokyo supermarket apologizing to customers for the shortage of some products, which was blamed on “media information on the earthquake”. “Potential sales restrictions are in place”the sign revealed, adding that bottled water was already being rationed due to the“instability” of supply.

On the website of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten on Saturday morning, the most searched items included portable toilets, canned goods and bottled water. The Japanese word for the term “provisions” is among the trends on the social network X, where residents share their concerns about possible compulsive shopping behavior and ask Internet users to act rationally.

“The probability of another powerful earthquake is higher than normal, but this does not indicate that an earthquake will occur with certainty”the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said in a warning on Thursday after a 7.1-magnitude tremor injured 14 people in the south of the country and made a powerful earthquake more likely, according to its estimates. The archipelago, home to some 125 million people, experiences about 1,500 tremors a year, most of them of low magnitude.