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Mount Yake and Niigata-Yakeyama: 2 Live Cameras in Japan

Mount Yake, on the Nagano–Gifu border, and Niigata-Yakeyama, in Niigata, have names close enough to be confused for one another. Both are continuously monitored volcanoes, and both are steaming.

What you can see

The names first. Yakeyama — burnt mountain — is a name used in several places, so the one in Niigata takes the prefecture as a prefix: Niigata-Yakeyama. Search for either and you get both, which is why the two cameras are on one page here.

Mount Yake stands just south of Kamikochi. Its 1915 eruption dammed the Azusa River and created Taisho Pond, where the drowned trees still stand in the water. Steam still rises near the summit.

Niigata-Yakeyama is a relatively young lava dome north of the Myoko group. Steam rises from the summit, and because a wide area carries no trees it reads paler than the mountains around it — a useful way to pick it out.

Cameras you can watch now: 2

All 2 are still images. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

Morning. Both are peaks over 2,000m, and cloud tends to build before noon and hide the summit.

By season, steam shows best when it is cold. On a winter morning the vapour goes white at once, so plumes invisible in summer stand up as clear threads. In snow, the vents can stay bare and dark while everything around them turns white.

Both refresh every two minutes and are still images, so nothing shows at night.

If it isn't showing

Both cameras were placed by the Japan Meteorological Agency to watch the mountain for change, not to show a view. The framing never moves, so the same composition runs for years. The refresh is a fine two minutes, but these are stills, so the rise of a steam plume itself cannot be followed. After dark nothing shows.

Mount Yake's location reads "the Nagano-Gifu border". This site counts the first prefecture named, so it sits under Nagano, and there is no Gifu page. Three other volcano cameras stand on that border — Norikura, Ontake and Hakusan — and only Hakusan is counted on the Ishikawa side. Niigata-Yakeyama is one of Niigata's four cameras; the other three are river cycling feeds. See Niigata.

South of Mount Yake the ridge continues to Mount Norikura; southwest of Niigata-Yakeyama is Midagahara, Tateyama. For another mountain where the steam is visible, Mount Kusatsu-Shirane looks much the same. The valley Mount Yake dammed to make Taisho Pond is on the Kamikochi cameras. What volcano cameras are for is set out in What volcano cameras are looking at.

Where to find Mount Yake and Niigata-Yakeyama

Agencies publishing the cameras on this 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.

To find other cameras, go to the camera list. You can narrow the cameras by format, region, subject and provider.