There's ash and soot EVERYwhere

I'm pretty sure I stole that line from somewhere, but I can't remember where......

I know I'm crazy to think this is cool, but there was a rather long earthquake last Sunday morning that turned out not to be just an earthquake, but an eruption of the volcano, Mt. Asama (or Asamayama as they call it in Japanese....yama = mountain), that I was skiing near just a few weeks ago. :-) I just heard about the eruption from teachers at school today, and the Science teacher sitting near me hesitated not at all to whip out the microscope slide he'd prepared with ash dust he'd taken from his desktop at school (mind you, we didn't get enough ash in my area for any sort of obvious covering, but during the day on Sunday, it seemed to be snowing lightly outside even though the skies didn't appear at all to be in a snow-friendly state). Asamayama is only about an hour's drive from where I live.



Here's my photo of Asamayama from my recent ski-trip:








And here's a link to a article about the eruption, complete with video, if you're so inclined:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/02/mount-asama-volcano-erupts-japan

Geothermal-inclined regions are never boring!