The final two rides of this chilly winter trip takes us east from Kumamoto, through the massive Aso Volcano crater, ...

who raises the Japanese Brown cattle breed, a local specialty. Residents also used the highway to burn fields in areas around the caldera rim to maintain meadows there. In the Aso area ...

Travel through one of the largest calderas in the world at Mt. Aso in Kumamoto Pref. The caldera has fertile ground to sustain crops and livestock.

A volcanic eruption in southern Japan 30,000 years ago was so massive ... 1 trillion cubic meters estimated to have come from the Aso caldera in Kumamoto Prefecture about 90,000 years ago.