Mount Asama, one of the volcanoes in central Japan erupted yesterday. Eruptions are not a rare event in Japan. Mount Sakurajima near Kagoshima regularly has a column of smoke rising from it. Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest mountain, is quite literally a time bomb waiting to explode.

At the start of 2000 I was living in Otaru, Hokkaido. On March 31st,  the morning TV news showed that the local volcano, Mount Usu, was smoking. (Note I saw the pictures on the screen, but didn’t understand what the newscaster was saying.) A couple of friends and I had the day off so we decided to go and have a look. We drove from Otaru to Lake Toya, but got a little lost on the way and ended up taking little back roads rather than the main highway. We arrived at Lake Toya to find it was very quiet and there was only a single news photographer standing  at the lake edge.

I took a few photographs of the Mount Usu erupting in front of us.

Mount Usu eruption in 2000

The news photographer then asked how we had got there. It turned out that the main road had been closed, 15,000 people had been evacuated, and the person on TV had been saying how dangerous it was. I asked if we were safe where we were on the opposite side of the lake to the volcano. The answer was no. If the volcano suddenly decided to vent under the lake it would send a tidal wave hurtling across the surface washing away everything along the lake edge. If you survived the surge of water, you’d still have to deal with a sky full of falling debris. At this point my friends and I decided it was probably a good idea to head home.