I major in Geophysics at university and I call bullshit. It is highly unlikely that moon has anything to do with this at all. Of course the moon has a large effect on the earth, but the only thing you're going to see is a higher and lower tide sequence.
Apart from which earthquakes happen every day of the year, some large, some small. No doubt the japan quake was huge, but the nz one was far smaller in term of magnitude, it was only the fact that it hit a populated area (christchurch) that it caused so much damage.
check here to see all quakes over m4 recorded in the last week. the ones coloured blue are from today...
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/
quakes happen every single day; some of them large enough to do damage (ie M5 plus). It's just pot luck whether they hit a populated area or not.