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We traveled here from our internet café in Fukuoka, and had yet another delay. This was due to an 'accident' which Ben informs us usually means someone has jumped in front of the tracks (pretty morbid , sorry).
We eventually made it to the tiny town of Aso. The attraction here was that Aso San (Mount Aso) was an active volcano and we wanted to see some action!! It's actually in the centre of a giant ancient volcanic crater that is 80km around, and we fully appreciated this when we saw a plastic 3D map of the area.
As we got of the train in Aso, a bus was there and after a few language problems we eventually found it went to the youth hostel.
At the hostel we met our crazy host. She was an old Japanese lady who rambled in Japanese (much like the drunk man off 'The Fast Show'), with the occasional English word chipped in, and then would laugh! She actually made enough sense to get by and we soon found our way to the only restaurant in town, for lunch, and a convenience store.
After this we were to go up the mountain to see the volcano. Whilst waiting for the bus we met 2 other backpackers (a rarity in Aso) and decided to get a taxi to the top all together. The taxi driver drove us all the way up and waited for us and then drove us down - brilliant!
At the top the typhoon that had delayed us before again stumped us, as the top was in thick cloud and we could only see a few feet ahead. Through slight breaks in the mist we managed to stare into the crater at the bright turquoise lake and also at the clouds of sulphuric gases spurting out of it!! This was the activity. No lava but this was good enough for us.
Whilst in Aso, we also visiting the local Onsen - communal baths that in this case were natural hot springs - where we had to get naked with Japanese people, again.
From here we headed back to Osaka for a party!
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