Active Volcano Mountain, Mt. Aso

Lil Notti Monkey!!! Are u ready? We are goin to visit the active volcano mountain today!!! It's gonna be a cold day, it's snowing!!!! please dress up. Where are ur leather gloves????

JS was so so so excited about this visit. 

JS: "We are going to visit a REAL volcanic mountain?"

Monkey: "Yes my love.......-_-"

Since Control Freak Queen Monkey planned and decides all the itinerary, everyday was a surprise for JS. I guess it's really like a new day for him, waking up to my short briefing of activities and weather report. 

As we were gobbling down our yummy japanese breakfast in front of the fire place, our room attendant asked wat's the activity of the day? We mentioned Mount Aso. 

He gasped and said: "U did not watch the news today???"

yeah the news is in japanese...like I understand? :P

"The mountain is erupting!! it will be closed."

>.<

We went anyway....the Chauffeur came and picked us up. The journey was almost an hour from the ryokan that we stayed. If you prefer you can stay around Mount Aso itself, which is so much nearer. But Takefue *the ryokan we stayed in* was the best accommodation experience ever EVER!!!! EVER!!!! We would like to return again and stay at Takefue, despite its accessibility. There's no public transport so u have to cab around. There's basically nothing there, so u just stay in-house within your villa, soak in the onsen, have some luxurious spa and awesome outstanding dinner and breakfast served in your villa.

Our chauffeur spoke only Japanese, somehow we understood him. Hahahahaha....so after we have scaled the mountain range up to 5000 feet above sea level, we were at a rather flat terrain....The volcanic mountain doesn't look steep at all bcoz we were already at the top....this was like the peak...and it's breathing hot air and sulphuric gasses.

Since it's erupting, the vicinity and radius of 4km was closed to everyone. Even the planned helicopter ride to fly over the volcano has to be cancelled :"(

One pic for memory hehehehe....
we could hear the sound..I can't describe but it sounded like a huge pot of rocks being boiled, knocking each other. We couldn't feel the heat coz it's so cold with strong wind.

JS kept on mentioning that we MUST come back the next time when it's not this dangerous and charter that planned helicopter ride again. Ok we will definitely come back :))) problem is, there's too many places in our to-visit-again list. It's getting longer....hahahahaha

Surrounding the active volcano mountain are many other mountain. Mount Aso is the largest active volcano in Japan. This area consist of 5 other mountains surrounding and wrapping each other. Mount Aso range consist of Mount Neko, Mount Taka, Mount Naka, Mount Eboshi, Mount Kishima. Wow this is like one visit and we get to see 5 volcanic mountains? Today only the crater of Mount Naka is active....perpetually emitting sulphuric gas. 

There are people walking nearby. Actually those ppl are pretty far away...def beyond 4km away bcoz everything was closed.

and it's freezing cold too!!! some of the leftover snow on the grass and slopes
plus there's wind-chill....brrrRRRRRrrrrrr

Then we went to the museum to understand more on the history of Mount Aso. Erupted more than 300,000 years ago...it formed the world largest Caldera. Yeah the largest caldera in the world. I was so amazed at the beauty of its geographic creation. It was also very destructive. 

the famous inverted rice bowl, a small lil mountaineer created down the mountain range....it's called Kome-zuka or rice mound. So cute!!! and perfectly conical except there's a small crater on top.

Bcoz Mount Aso is so active, there's plenty of hot springs around this area....so don't worry, plenty to explore and to stay at :))))

And we went to say hello to the Wild Horses....HELLO!!!!! Konnichiwa!!!!! I am Monkey watt's ur name? The Chauffeur then quickly got us back into the limo before these horses came to kick my ass.

Such beautiful pic composed by JS, very Marlboro liked....hahahahaha and most of the pics had to take in a hurry, either for safety or bcoz it's just too blarddy cold and windy that u can't even feel ur fingers.

Once the chauffeur got us from this side of the car entrance, we alighted at the other end to his dismay to say hello to Moo Moo Cows!!! they were just grazing at the meadow opposite the horses.

Helloooo moo moo cows!!! u r the best produce in Kyushu and u gonna be my dinner tonite nyek nyek nyek. So u see, it ain't easy to be our driver :P

In the end Mr. Chauffeur gave up on us and announced he's gonna drive us home. And down we go from Mount Aso to the beautiful caldera and up to the other side of another mountain range...in fact we were on top of the caldera.

Once we were at the top of the caldera....WAHHHHHHH

even our chauffeur WAHHHH-ed together with us!!!! and mumbled a lot of exclamation in japanese. He's definitely not swearing....hahahahha could be saying how on earth God created such beautiful place for us human beings.

This caldera was created when a huge eruption collapsed the entire area here into a really flat surface to filled up the empty spaces left after puking out watever that's in the stomach of Earth. :P

Mount Aso's caldera measures about 25km north to south and 18km from east to west....That's really huge...We were only looking at the north side of it. That's 25km x 18km. Do u know that Singapore is 25km x 49km? So now u get the feel of how humongous this caldera is??

As JS was bz snapping away, Mr. Chauffeur explained to me a lot of things in Japanese and finally I got him....Mount Aso range consisted of 5 mountains. and when u look from left to right, it's a Buddha sleeping. The face is on your left, his chest, the navel which was spewing hot air and smoke, and finally his 2 legs which were made from 2 mountains.

and I was like OH YEAHHH Sou Des Neh!!!! 
oh well that's the only japanese I can expressed out to him at that moment. in fact there's so much I wanted to tell him but he was so eager to tell me more.

JS and Notti Monkey, not a very clear pic coz I can't blame our Safety First Chauffeur who have no idea how to use the manual focus Leica. 

It was such a beautiful day for us. The three of us stood there Wah-wah-ing for a couple of more minutes before we decided it's way too cold unless we wanna get sick. So he safely drove us back and made sure we had a comfortable non-puking drive through the mountain range winding roads. Once we were back, we stripped and jumped into the 45*C onsen coz it's just WAY TOO COLD that day. aaaAAAAAAaaaaaa

If you wanna see the eruption on that day, click on the video below. It's even more majestic at nite when it was spewing FIRE!!!!