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| Mt. Bandai | ||
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Mt. Bandai |
As I said before, Inawashiro lies in an area surrounded by mountains, forests and lakes. The most prominent
feature is Mt. Bandai, just north of the town.The area of Bandai-San ("San" is Japanese for mountain) is the southern most
part
of the Bandai-Asahi Nationalpark. It's only one of many mountains
here, it's not even the highest (1819m), but it still sticks out for two
reasons. For one, Mt. Bandai stays a bit separated from the other mountains.
The other, more important reason is it's shape, which seems to consist
of three pyramids.
The reason for this slightly weird shape is the volcanic nature of Mt.
Bandai. The last explosion was in 1888 and in type similar to the explosion
of Mount St. Helens in United States in 1980. The cause of the explosions
was pressure built up by entrapped steam rather than magma. Hardly any
new material was found after the eruption.
(The explosion of Mt. Bandai was on of the first properly researched eruptions.) After the top blew off a massive landslide went down the northern slopes
of the mountain and stopped several water outlets of that area. Some lakes
(Hibara, Onogawa, Akimoto and Goshiki) are one result of that incident. Another
result is an area called Gosiki-numa (5 Color Ponds. Well, I personally think
there
are only 3 to 4 different colors). It's a major tourist attraction in the
fall when the foliage is at it's peak. Overall was the explosion considerably smaller than the one of Mount St.
Helen, but still quite impressive. Especially for those 400 something people
killed in the event. I'm sure they were impressed. Mt. Bandai is expected to go
off again within the
next 100 years. For that reason the whole mountain is tapped with sensors
and the scientists claim that they could predict an eruption at least 48
hours in advance. Well, I hope that these sensors work better than those
used for predicting earthquakes. At the moment Mt. Bandai is behaving pretty well, though. It has to endure all kinds of outdoor activities, mainly hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter. Additionally they tap the hot water sources to feed several "Onzen" (a natural kind of hot bath) and in the winter to keep the roads ice free. The hot water is distributed via pipes and then sprayed via nozzles on the roads, where it is supposed to melt the ice. Nice idea, but doesn't really work. The water has cooled down pretty much by the time it arrives at its destination and if the outside temperature is low enough the water freezes on the road, adding ice instead of removing it. And even if it works it turns the street usually into a big puddle. Which is a lot of fun for the pedestrians who either try to cross the road or get soaked by passing cars spraying the slush-water-mix all over them. Hiking up Mt. Bandai is pretty easy, roughly half a dozen trails lead up there. I did it 3 or 4 times so far (here is a prove). The view is potentially beautiful, but either clouds or at least massive haze obscured it considerably. A really clear day during the summer is rare in Japan. Still, hiking up there is a lot of fun and a good way to meet Japanese. Older Japanese that is, hiking doesn't seem to be in fashion with the younger people of Nippon. In the winter, as I said, several ski resorts on Mt. Bandai are opened. I snowboarded there last winter (98/99) but I have no pictures to prove it. You have to take my word for it. The resorts worked fine for me as a beginner, but for advanced they are probably a bit small. Anyway, living at the bottom of this mountain for three years let me grew pretty fond of it. I can see from my flat, I can see it from work, I can see it on my way between those places. It's my mountain. But maybe I'm only so impressed, because I grew up in the north German flat land (Which is actually so flat that they developed a sport called "Bosseln". It's a kind of street bowling where you try to bowl a ball with the least number of attempts possible from village to village. But that is a completely different story...). Continue here to the next chapter
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