Walking around Aso

Today is the last day we will have our bikes, so after a nice morning run for one of us (the mountain scenery was beautiful) and a nice lazy morning for the other, we made good use of them and rode down to Aso Station where we could catch a bus that would take us up to the base of the volcano crater. Aso is a collection of five peaks in the center of the large caldera that Aso city is located in. A caldera is the result of a volcano erupting and imploding in on itself. A large crater-like area is created when the magma under the surface leaves. Aso is one of the largest calderas in the world, at about 25km in diameter. It is also still very active, it's last eruption being in 2016. Not the smartest place to build a city, one would think. Or a tourist industry centered around climbing the volcano and looking inside. I mean honestly, who'd be dumb enough to climb an active volcano just for a peek inside?

So, as I said, we rode our bikes down to the station to catch the bus up to the base of the volcano. The train at Aso station is themed, which is not uncommon in Japan. This one was themed with the city mascot, Asoboi (yes, Asoboi)

And of course Kumamon was there (Aso is just a few miles east of Kumamoto)

At the station

At one souvenir shop

And at the other shop, as well

At the crater base, there are lights and warnings all over the place. Since Aso is active, if there is a lot of volcanic activity, they don't let people climb. Also, one of Aso's favorite things to do is spew poisonous sulphur gas in the air. If it is actively doing that, they don't let people climb. If it is actively doing that and the wind is strong in the wrong direction, they evacuate the base.

Welp, no crater hike for us. When the wind was right you could smell the sulphur pretty strongly. So we made the best of it and hiked down

to the next station, Kusasenrigahama, a grassy plain with some interesting topography. Before hiking around, we stopped for lunch at a Nepalese restaurant, of all things, located at the rest station.

If you have ever played either Final Fantasy X or X-2, the Calm Lands appear to be patterned after this area. Large fissures cut into the plains with large rises overlooking ponds created by the rains. You can see in the picture below how smooth some of the peaks look. This is a result of them "bubbling" up during the eruptions.

Taken from atop one of the rises. The fissures are hard to see here

Notice all the dead area around the volcano due to the poison gas. Also, notice one of the fissures in the center.

All in all, a nice day of hiking despite not being able to climb the crater. We headed back to the station, then to the hotel and finally broke down and packed the bikes, signaling the end of another cycling trip. We have just a few days in Tokyo before we head back home, but no regrets. This was a great trip with some wonderful biking. We're already talking about coming back to Kyuushuu without bikes to visit many places we didn't have time/energy to see this trip.

I'll leave you with a few signs we happened upon. The first was in a bathroom at Kusasenrigahama, the second a list of prohibited items to take on the highway bus we'll be taking to Kumamoto tomorrow. Both of them....well, see for yourself

Usually, I get what they were trying to say., but this...

What gets me is to be on this list, at one point someone had to try to bring it on...