Fukushima safety measures tightened, 500 flights cancelled and 59 injured as Typhoon Vongfong hits Tokyo

Residents look on as strong winds whip up towering waves that hit the Shitang Township in Wenling, China on Sunday

Safety measures at the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant were tightened today as the strongest storm to hit Japan this year battered the southern islands of Kyushu and Shikoku.

Typhoon Vongfong brought heavy rain to Tokyo and caused extensive travel disruption across Japan, where 820,000 people have been urged to leave their homes and seek shelter.

Many trains in western cities were suspended, while more than 500 domestic flights were cancelled, the public broadcaster NHK said. At least one overseas flight was cancelled, according to an airline.

About 4,900 households in Tokyo suburbs were without power, media said, and rain in the city was expected to intensify overnight.

Vongfong continued to batter the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, where it landed yesterday, and moved up to also hit Kyushu and Shikoku islands, injuring 59 people, NHK said.

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On Sunday, the wind weakened significantly from the previous day when it reached a peak of 146mph, which had made Vongfong into a 'super typhoon'.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, said in a statement it had increased the water transfer and storage capacity to prevent an overflow of radioactive water from the plant.

A major baseball game in Osaka city, between the Orix Buffaloes and the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters for the Pacific League playoff, was also postponed.

More than 200,000 residents were forced to flee their homes on the island, some 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, before it was hit by what was Japan's most powerful storm this year. It was the first time a Nippon Professional Baseball playoff game was cancelled because of a typhoon.

The typhoon, which also caused massive waves on the eastern coast of China, flooded streets and cut power to more than 60,000 homes.

A satellite image taken of the storm earlier this week revealed that the eye of the typhoon was roughly 50 miles wide.

After making landfall on Sunday, the storm lost intensity and was downgraded from a 'super typhoon' to a tropical storm. Wind speeds dropped significantly from Saturday's peak of 146mph as the storm made its way towards Tokyo.

It is on course to reach Kyushu, the country's third largest island by Monday. Authorities on the island were forced to halt the high-speed bullet train this weekend after strong winds blew a plastic sheet onto the aerial wires on the line.

Meanwhile, Japanese airlines JAL and ANA cancelled more than 400 flights due to strong winds.

Early on Sunday, parts of Okinawa received more than six centimetres of rain within an hour while some western areas were forecast to receive total rainfall of over 50 centimetres.

The storm is expected to cut across the biggest of Japan's islands, Honshu, on Monday - causing heavy rain in Tokyo - before exiting from the north coast, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.

Vongfong, which means wasp in Cantonese, was following the path of Phanfone, a typhoon that slammed into Japan's main island on Monday, disrupting transport and prompting evacuation advisories for hundreds of thousands of people.

Seven people were killed, including three U.S. airmen swept out to sea and a man who died while surfing.