Standing up early we headed to Mount Aso, which was an adventure for itself. Due to extreme heavy raining the area suffered from damages caused by landslips and mass of water. Part of the rail track was demaged and a replacement bus was running there. We already knew that from the internet, but an older lady was of supersweet and perfect help.
Appearently people in the area are extraordinary nice. The taxi driver who brought us to our hotel took us back to the station for free and than also stoped to get a brochure for us reporting about the heavy raining. Speaking even a little Japanese is worth sooo much in Japan!
With bus and ropeway we drove up to the Nakadake, an active vulcano with a cyan pond and sulfur smoke. When I’ve been there for the first time one could just see the smoke, so this time it was extra impressive. The area is amazing. You can walk around a little along the other, not active craters and through a lunar landscape of black sand. It’s so impressive to be so close to the earth. It’s nature and you can see how little humans can do against it’s powers. And as if nature wanted to show us a sunny picnic turned into stucking in cold clouds‘ fog before it started to rain cats and dogs. We hid under a shelter and decided not to make another walk one station below, which we than did later on the „ground“ of the plateau, where we had pure sunshine again – our sunburned skin thanked us later.
