ssive repair bill running into tens of billions of dollars.
Foreign countries have started to send disaster relief teams to help Japan, with the United Nations sending a group to help coordinate work.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of Sept. 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. (Additional reporting by Risa Maeda in Tokyo and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Dean Yates and Nick Macfie; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)