Saturday, December 31, 2016

"rather seek ye the kingdom of God" - 100,000-Year-Old Mt. Fuji

Mt. Fuji snow-capped, 100 Km far, over dry paddy field from around Tokyo, at the end of 2016 

100,000-Year-Old Mt. Fuji

It is believed that Mt. Fuji was fully formed about 100,000 years ago.

As other volcanoes in Japan (with 86 active volcanoes) were mostly formed several hundreds of thousands of years to one million years ago, Mt. Fuji is a relatively young volcano in Japan, though it is the highest mountain in Japan at 3,776 meters.

Mt. Fuji is situated 100 km (60 miles) west of Tokyo.  It happens to be roughly near the central point of the Japanese Archipelago.  There are no other capitals of major countries in the world that have the highest mountains of their nations so close to them.

The last major eruption of Mt. Fuji occurred in 1707.  At the time, a great amount of volcano ash fell in Tokyo (then called Edo) like snow falling.  This eruption was triggered by an M8.7 earthquake that had occurred 49 days before the eruption.

If Mt. Fuji should erupt again in the same scale as that of the 1707 eruption, not only the city of Tokyo (with population of 12 million) but also the economy of Japan is expected to be hit hard since the possible disaster would sever the main transportation artery between Tokyo and other western cities such as Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima and as far as Fukuoka.
Mt. Fuji is usually called Fuji-san (san: mountain) by the Japanese people with a sense of pride and familiarity.

Incidentally, the ridge line or the shape of the slope from its summit to its foot somewhat resembles the curve of a Japanese sword.
(Refer to of the December 29 post for a clearer shape of the slope).

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