Toyako onsen

Today we went up Mt Usu. It was pretty wild up on the mountain. At the museum located at the top of Mt Usu, we saw how the whole Toyako onsen town came to be, how it came out of a series of erruptions over many years. The lake is a v big crater which resulted from a massive explosion thousands of years ago. The mountain exploded again at some later point and islands in the middle emerged. There has been two more explosions in the last seventy years, the most recent one taking place in 2000.

I sense that people in this town had collectively made a decision to live with a volcano (a living but resting one) by organising their lives around tourism and careful evacuation plans and evacuation training.

Its very beautiful here. I like it here a lot.
We are leaving this place this morning for Otaru, a historicsl port located north from here, on the Japan sea side.Read more