Town of Kusatsu cameras

Kusatsu is a hot spring town in Gunma Prefecture, in central Japan, built on the water that the Kusatsu-Shirane volcano heats underground. The town has good reason to watch the mountain closely: its economy depends on the springs, and in January 2018 an unexpected eruption at Motoshirane, next to a ski area, killed one person and injured others.

The town hall runs two live cameras and shares them free on YouTube. One is fixed on Yugama, the turquoise crater lake of Shirane, one of the most acidic lakes in the world; the other can be moved and usually points at Motoshirane.

They are a good example of something common in Japan: alongside the national monitoring network, towns run their own cameras, partly for safety and partly so that visitors can see the weather and the colour of the lake before making the trip up.