Tauranga City Council is looking to its Japanese sister city for first-hand tsunami guidance in attempts to strengthen the city's own evacuation and education methods.

During the Tauranga delegation's 12-day trip to sister cities in China and Japan - Yantai in China and Hitachi in Japan – a keen interest was taken in Hitachi's knowledge and experience from the devastating tsunami in 2011.

Tauranga City councillor Matt Cowley is pleased with tsunami talks between Tauranga City and Hitachi.

On March 11, 2011, a massive magnitude nine earthquake struck the city of Hitachi with aftershocks and a tsunami leaving a death toll of about 19,000.

The natural disaster caused fires and damage to coastal ports and towns with over a million buildings destroyed or partly collapsed.

At the time Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the disaster nation's worst crisis since World War II.

Tauranga City councillor Matt Cowley, part of the delegation along with Tauranga City Mayor Stuart Crosby, says this knowledge is invaluable when it comes to helping advance Tauranga's future tsunami methods.

'They said there were two secrets; educating children because the parents pretty much followed and of course around evacuation,” says Matt.

'As soon as there was the trigger around the size and how long the earthquake lasted they knew to get to high ground straight away and avoid cars.

'For Tauranga and New Zealand we can do all the analysis from the experts but it's best to learn first-hand especially from Hitachi which is a port city and is similar to our economy so we can learn a lot from them.”

Council's latest step to be ready for tsunamis came in February announcing its vision to have city wide tsunami evacuation routes and signs in place by 2015 allowing residents to move safely away from natural disasters.

The routes and signs are set out for all of Tauranga, Mount Maunganui and Papamoa by May 2015 including evacuation routes to a tsunami safe zone that can be reached on foot within 40 minutes.

Matt says during talks council discovered the Japanese city does use tsunami sirens but deem them not a top priority compared to evacuation routes and education – something council are still investigating.

Last April council agreed to go back to the drawing board on the tsunami sirens issue after learning the contracted system will cost $2.3 million when its budget was $1.05 million.

This came after it was revealed Meerkat Systems, contracted to design and obtain consent for a tsunami warning system, could not deliver the required specification of 80 per cent coverage in outdoor at risk areas on budget.

An agreement canvassing all natural hazards is also being drawn up for the two cities – but with particular importance on tsunamis. The agreement may see experts either making the trip to or from to Hitachi along with education material shared particularly at a school level.

'They have been though the situation before and we are still assessing our level of preparedness so they were very pleased with where we are at and how open we were to learning.”