volcanoes

i love volcanoes. it started when i lived in Auckland, NZ, for a while. there are about 60 volcanoes in or around the city, which makes for quite a strange scenery, sometimes. all are extinct and very old, but they're there and they're taking up space. and then, in the bay, there's Rangitoto, the youngest of them all, which rose out of the waters around 1400, i think. must have cause quite a stir...

then i moved to southern Japan, and not only was there a volcano in the bay, Sakurajima, but it was active! it didn't 'ash' much while i was there, but we did had a couple of ash storms. everything was black outside and people who'd been outside were covered in it. this whole ash thing made it a little hard to do laundry: you could never be sure it wouldn't ash, if you put your clothes outside, to dry, so it was best to do it on a weekend, or on a day you could keep an eye on the weather.

you can't climb Sakurajima, but i climbed nearby Mt Aso instead. also an active volcano, it was one of the scariest moments of my life. not because of the smoke coming out from the rim, but because the downward path we chose was neck-breaking. i couldn't believe it when we got to the bottom in one piece!