Last November, I visited Hakone for the first time, and was impressed by the active hot spring where water vapor comes up from the underground regularly. "Soon, I would like to come back here to enjoy hot spring bathing" was my thought then.
However, the things develop against my expectation: there is a report recently that the Hakone volcano seems to wake up from the 3000-years dream...(In Japan, China and other countries, there is no historic record of the eruption of the Hakone volcano.) See for example here.
A number of local earthquakes continues these days, which are so local that people in Tokyo,
or even those who are just outside the Hakone region do not feel any vibrations of the ground. Scientists reported that there is a slight expansion of the whole mountain, indicating the magmatic activity is escalating gradually.
Many people wonder whether this phenomenon is connected with the Big Earthquake in the East Japan two years ago.
