Live camera
Mount Usu live camera — Toyako, Hokkaido
It has erupted four times since 1910, each time raising new hills and craters. The camera looks across Lake Toya from the eastern shore.
Sample August 2026What you are looking at
Mount Usu, under continuous watch by the Japan Meteorological Agency — a low mountain on the shore of Lake Toya, shown with the ground around it.
It is 737 metres. Usu erupted four times in the twentieth century, which makes it one of the most finely documented volcanoes in Japan. In the eruption of 1943–45 a wheat field simply rose up and became a new mountain; it is called Showa-shinzan. In 2000 residents were evacuated on the strength of a forecast made before the eruption began, and nobody was killed.
The record of large eruptions begins in August 1663; the plume from it was reportedly visible from Tsugaru. In the eruption of March 1822 a pyroclastic flow burned the village of Abuta and 103 people died. In July 1910 the north side erupted, opening 45 craters; hot mudflow killed one person, and Nishimaruyama was pushed up by about 155 metres.
Lake Toya to the north is a caldera from a huge eruption roughly a hundred thousand years ago, since filled with water. Usu is a later volcano, born on the southern rim of that caldera.
Winter is the season. The colder it gets, the whiter and denser the steam, with the colour of bare rock left between it and the snow. Days are short in Hokkaido: in December it is dark by mid-afternoon, so open it about an hour earlier than instinct suggests.
About this camera
| Place | Toyako, Hokkaido |
| Format | Still, every 2 min |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | Volcano · Nature |
| Operator | Japan Meteorological Agency — volcano surveillance cameras |
| Terms of use | PDL 1.0 |
The operator's own page
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.
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