Typhoon Usagi was about 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) south of Tokyo and on course to hit the southern island of Kyushu on Thursday morning before heading Friday to the most populous island of Honshu, the meteorological agency said.

Usagi -- which means rabbit in Japanese -- was accompanied by strong winds and packing gusts of 180 kilometres an hour.

"The possibility is very high that western Japan would be under a storm warning on Friday," said Toshihiko Sobajima, an official at the meteorological agency.

The typhoon comes two weeks after Japan was hit by one of its most powerful typhoons in decades. Typhoon Man-yi killed three people, with one still unaccounted for.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.