Hitchhiking in Japan: Mount Aso
6th and 7th of May, 2025.
The new spot it’s better. It’s not only less windy but now we can camp in the soft grass and not in gravel.
The bad weather turns into a thunder storm at night, and our tents can barely take all the wind which eventually catch up with us. I can only imagine how bad off we would be in the other spot. Probably would’ve been carried away. We are now only hoping for a better weather, with good visibility tomorrow.
We have some food inside our tents. I make a sign for tomorrow, which reads crater, and when it gets dark I already go to sleep. It’s insane how strong the wind is at night, and the rain keeps on pouring for a long time. The craziest thing though is that some people keep coming and talking loudly, laughing, and making all sort of loud noises. It’s freaking cold outside, what the hell are you doing here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night? Go home!
In the morning we get blue sky and sunny day! Yay! I wake up a bit early and soon enough lots of cars, motorbikes and travel buses start to arrive. I wake up Miles and soon after breakfast we go exploring the area. Ah! Almost nobody is buying things / food from inside, apart from coffee. We get hot water from the machine for our coffees.
The views are incredible! Not so much for big fatty mountains, but more for infinity. It’s a green scenery which carries on until where your eyes can see. You have a 360 degree view from up here, and you can go hiking in many different directions. There’s also benches to sit and rest in many spots. At the summit, there are some concrete platforms and a huge stone with some Japanese inscriptions. It’s said that the locals used to do pilgrimage here, to the top of this mountain, as a sign of worship. I just don’t know to which god that worship was for it.
I would like to spend more time here. Just sitting in one of the benches and admiring this amazing view for some time. But as we also intend to go and visit the crater today, we must leave soon.
We wait for a few minutes by the road until a couple finally stops. They are very sweet and kind, and seem a bit confused if they should takes us or not, but they do. They drop us off right by all the buildings and visitor centre. It’s about 40 minutes driving from Daikanbo Lookout until the Aso Volcano Museum.
We visit the outside area here, where a small lakes lies in the middle of nowhere, for no apparently reason. It’s beautiful!
After dropping off our backpacks by the restaurants (not wasting time asking inside the visitor centre), we start walking towards the creator and hitchhiking at the same time. Soon enough another seniour couple takes us in, and go through some tidying up in their car so we can fit in. How cute!
There’s a bit of a commotion up there, and even though there’s a lot of people, it’s nothing as it could be, with really loads of the tourists from down there. It’s a bit confusing as it seems like nobody is going to the crater, and as there’s this one operative building (another one is abandoned), with loads of people inside, and it says something about a bus, I want to understand what’s going on. My main questions are if we can hike to the crater (so no need to pay for the bus), and if it’s FREE to visit it. The answers for both o them are yes. It takes me a lot of time to get this information with someone working inside this building. The only problem now is that the crater is closed. What? NO! Yep, they actually closed a few hours ago, due to some gas detected in the air. The road which leads to it is closed, and right by it (and only there) there’s a board with some lights on it, and this shows it if you can either go or not. What Miles and I don’t understand is, why there’s no such a thing down there to the visitor centre? People have to drive all the way here to figure out only then that the crater is closed. Is this still Japan, right? How come they can be so reckless and careless?
Even though we only hitchhiked here, and didn’t have to walk or pay for it, it’s still very sad that we cannot see it. It looks beautiful from the photos…
On our hitchhiking way back, two foreigner guys gives us a lift down.
What we can do now is start heading to Kirishima National Park, our next stop. Even though it’s beautiful up here, and it would be nice to camp and all, it will be, most likely, very windy and all; plus there’s not really easy / cheap food to get. But mostly, as we still have quite a few hours of daylight, is better if we just get as close as possible to the park today.
After some minutes and a very cool photo, two friends going all the way to Kagoshima (a big and popular town right after Kirishima), stop for us. So cool! They are very young and also very friendly. But they cannot speak any English. When we are arranging our backpacks in the trunk, a tiny hair dryer turns itself on by accident, and it’s a funny situation trying to explain to the young guy what’s going on. Another funny thing is how the two of them keep on chatting, very enthusiastically, all the way.
Miles and I decide that it’s for the best if we stay down in a small town just before the National Park. Funny how things work and how small decisions can make all the difference. We need to buy food and there’s a big chance that we won’t find anything up there. It seems though, that the young guys were happy to drive us all the way to the entrance of the park, as there’s a road which they can take to go to Kagoshima from there. We stay in Ebino instead, a very small and funny town.
10 Years Around the World 