Thanks to sdier for the really nice DSLR pictures in this post!

Yesterday I left early from Tokyo and took the Shinkansen north to the Miyagi prefecture, and more precisely to the area surrounding Mount Zao.

Mount Zao is a volcano about 2h north of Tokyo. In winter, it's a big ski resort, but the rest of the year it is full of nice natural spots and hot springs. We rented a car and planned to go to two locations around the area:

• The Zao Fox Village, a zoo / free range area featuring, as you might expect, tons of foxes.
• The Okama Crater Lake, a lake in the crater of a previously active volcano, featuring some amazing views on the surrounding mountains and forests.

Zao Fox Village

This was a really fun site to visit. At first it looks like a normal zoo, just with a lot of foxes (but also goats, horses, rabbits, etc.). However the best part of it is a big open area where the foxes just roam free and can be fed. Cuteness overload. Visiting this in May was a great choice: we got to see a lot of 2-3 months old kits!

Twice a day the staff also take out the kits for some petting time!

As fun and cute as we expected, it ended up being a lot of fun.

Okama Crater Lake

This one unfortunately didn't go as planned. What we were hoping for was this view:

Instead what we got was this:

The top of the mount was pretty much stuck in a cloud. This combined with ~5°C and heavy winds meant we didn't stick around for too long. So unfortunately, no lake view this time! We still got to take some nice pictures: the 10m visibility combined with the volcanic environment gave a really unusual and otherworldy feeling.

On the way down we stopped to take a few more pictures, including some really nice waterfalls we could spot further away in the mountain range.

And in the evening, back to Tokyo for some quick Soba and Karaoke!