As someone who lives in Japan and has a lot of experience with earthquakes, the magnitude tells you not a lot, the depth and location/geology can easily change it from something you don't even feel to something quite big.

This is why I use every chance I can to espouse a scale like Japanese Shindo which actually measures the surface shaking (what matters to civilians) rather than the Magnitude scale that just measures the energy of the earthquake (more interesting to seismologists). Japanese news always focuses on the maximum observed Shindo which immediately tells you had bad it felt/affected people living nearby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...