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Gunma Live Cameras in Japan — 7 official webcams

Mount Asama from two angles, Mount Kusatsu-Shirane, the Karafuki fumaroles at Manza, and Lake Ozenuma. Volcanoes cluster here, and so do the cameras where you can actually see steam rising — plus two live streams on the Tone and the Watarase.

What you can see

Two of the seven belong to the Japan Meteorological Agency, three to the Ministry of the Environment, and the remaining two are river live streams from the transport ministry. Start with the five volcano cameras. There are two cameras on Mount Asama, and not by accident: the two agencies are watching for different things from different angles. Asama from Tsumagoi is the wide landscape including the foothills; the Meteorological Agency's Asama watches the cone from the Onioshi district, where lava from the 1783 eruption still lies on the surface.

Manza Karafuki is a patch of hillside on the flank of Kusatsu-Shirane that vents steam continuously, and Mount Kusatsu-Shirane holds Yugama, a strongly acidic crater lake. Lake Ozenuma is the odd one out: still water ringed by high moor.

The other two are video. The Tone and Karasu rivers stream cycles through several points on the Tone, which drains the largest basin in Japan, and the Karasu, which joins it at Takasaki. Upstream it is a valley in the hills, downstream a broad floodplain, so the view changes a great deal within one stream. The Watarase comes off the Ashio mountains onto the Kanto plain and joins the Tone as well. The rain that falls on the mountains the volcano cameras watch runs down these two rivers.

7 cameras in Gunma

2 video, 5 still. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

Karafuki, at Manza, is a bare slope with white steam venting from it continuously. Steam shows up whiter and thicker the colder and damper the air, so a winter morning is when it reads most clearly; on a summer afternoon the same volume can be almost invisible.

Lake Ozenuma straddles the Gunma–Fukushima border at about 1,660 m. Skunk cabbage flowers from late May into June, and the marsh grasses turn from late September into early October. The roads close for winter, leaving only a lake buried in snow.

Mount Asama has two cameras: a scenery camera from Tsumagoi and a Meteorological Agency monitoring camera. Cloud settles on the summit easily, so mornings tend to be clearer.

The Tone and Karasu and Watarase streams are busiest from June to October, when the rainy front and the typhoons overlap. In winter the water is low and the grass on the floodplain has died back, so the channel itself reads clearly.

Closer looks at cameras here

Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.

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