After Kumamoto my next port of call was the Aso area, its a 90km wide volcano crater that so large it contains a city, train route and 4 more volcanic peaks. One of the peaks (Naka Dake) is still active and has a cable car running up the side so you can peak over into the crater

But thats getting ahead of myself…

I checked into the hostel (Aso Rider House in Uchinomaki if anyone is interested, its on hostelworld.com and is pretty cool) and got invited to join everyone for dinner. So 300 yen later and I was munching on various grilled meat and veg, then the schochu came out…

It got a little crazy after that, I spent 45 minutes trying to explain what “cowboy bepop” was to some anime fans. They’d never heard of it and didnt recognise it from the episodes I had on my laptop. They left that night with a copy of them on a USB stick

I mentioned to the hostel manager that I still hadnt seen blueberries for sale anywhere (as we were eating them for desert) and he offered to take us all out and pick them. So 6am the next day (feeling rather crappy I’d like to add) we were out picking blueberries

yay for poisonous insects!

We all got back to the hostel at about half 8, thoroughly stuffed with fruit and tired. Thats when they pointed out that my bus to the mountain left in 20 minutes..

I arrived at the base station for the mountain at about half 10 and started queuing for a ticket up the cable car. About 5 minutes after buying the ticket they closed all four viewing areas at the peak, due to “Sulphur Dioxide emissions”. Bollocks

There’s very little to do at the site other than go up the mountain, so I sat and ate Ramen for 2 hours whilst the air cleared. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted all the lights coming on in the cablecars, so I grabbed my stuff and ran for the entrance. Sure enough 1 of the areas at the top had opened, the wind had changed direction and blew all the shitty air north – away from the viewing areas.

10 minutes later I was at the top and sure enough, it stank of sulphur. There’s a warning system in place at the peak, Blue light for OK, green for “asthma sufferers should leave”, Yellow for “elderly and kids should go right now” and Red for “Oh shit, everyone out”.

It started at green when I arrived..

Thats the view from the cablecar station, the steam coming up is a mix of water steam and Sulphur Dioxide, the latter is the reason they have to close the area occasionally.

click here for a 4.5Mb huge pic

and thats the inside of the crater, the left hand picture shows the steam being blown up by the wind. It usually curves back over to the crowd and causes a big wave of coughing. One of the requirements to be allowed up is that you carry a water-soaked cloth with you, if the gas levels get too high you can temporarily breath through it..

..which it very nearly did. There was a huge plume of steam come up and a wave of coughing started from the top end of the platform, a lot of people chose that moment to go home..

the joys of a telephoto lense..

and there it is, one cloud of poison please!

I left shortly after that and decided to walk down the volcano side instead of spend 600 yen on the cablecar, a wise choice as about halfway down I spotted this

which led past this

in black and white because i think it looks cooler :p The path leads to the peak of another mountain, it didnt specifically say that it was closed to the public but as the gases from the crater where being blown across it I decided not to chance it…

I got back to the bus stop and found out that I’d missed my bus by about 5 minutes (stopping for that piss on the way down wasnt the best plan ever), its only a 2km walk to the next one so what the hell? I passed a field with a helicopter in it and stopped to watch for a while and rest my feet. They were offering flights around the crater for 5000 yen a go.. well, when am I going to get that opportunity again?

fuck yeah

the main crater was too cloudy by this point, so we went over to the north crater and the “rice bowl” crater (so called because it looks like a rice bowl upside-down)

After that I carried on walking to the volcano museum and the other crater lake, by then a massive cloud had rolled in and it started raining. Heavily. Headed back to the hostel after that and popped out for dinner with a new arrival, ended up in a small Izakaya eating raw horsemeat, yakitori and beer

Today was just a chill-out morning then train journey to Beppu, where I realised I’d booked the hostel a day late..