Following my post on March 29th, 2025, I am going to show you the rest of our trip to Kumamoto.
Looking back now, I visited mostly not well-known sightseeing spots this time, but I remembered visiting at least one must-see spot in Kumamoto Prefecture. That is Mt. Aso located in the northeastern part of the prefecture. This mountain is a large compound active volcano and boasts arguably the largest caldera in the world, extending 25 kilometers in diameter. The central cone group consists of five peaks, the highest 1,592-meter Taka-dake, still active Naka-dake (see the photo below) and so on. The Nakadake trail is often closed when volcanic gas or volcanic activity is too high.
I can't finish here as this is a railway blog. Taking this opportunity, I’m going to show you one more tramcar of the Kumamoto City Tram. Please look at the top photo. It’s Unit 9202 of Kumamoto City Tram’s electric car 9200 series. The 9200 series was commissioned in 1992 to reinforce the transportation capacity of the city tram. A total of 5 units were built by ALNA. It is a middle-sized (13.5-meter-long) double-axle bogie car. A variable frequency drive electric control system with two 100kW induction motors is adopted. You can see an inclined frontal glass also serving as a panoramic window. This design looks like the Toei 8500 series, which was also commissioned in the early 1990’s. It seems to be a popular design at the time.
I enjoyed a must-see spot and a tramcar in Kumamoto.
