Signs of recovery were beginning to emerge in the city of Kumamoto on Friday, as major transportation routes disrupted by Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake resumed operations and as the death toll inched up to at least 35.

The resumption of major shinkansen lines, flights and highways three days after the initial quake, which registered up to shindo 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale, suggests the temblor was not as damaging as similarly powerful quakes of the recent past.

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region, the 2016 Kumamoto quakes and the 2024 quake on the Noto Peninsula all hit the shindo 7 threshold and caused lingering widespread damage.