For the 500 time this year, citizens of southern Japanese city Kagoshima spent their Monday morning sweeping ash off the streets, following the eruption of a volcano that released record-high smoke into the air.
Sakurajima volcano spewed ash as high as three miles into the sky on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. The Japan Meteorological Agency reported that this was the highest outpouring of smoke from the active volcano since they began tallying up numbers on Sakurajima in 2006.
The eruption from the 3,686 foot-high mountain on the island of Kyushu was massive-curls of grey smoke ascended into the atmosphere and could be seen from miles away.
But for the residents of the Japanese city known as the "Naples of the Eastern World," the event-and subsequent cleanup-was par for the course, as the volcano has flared up 499 times since January this year.
"The smoke was a bit dramatic, but we are kind of used to it," a city official who wished to remain anonymous told AP.
The volcano did not inflict injuries, deaths or damage to property of the residents of Kagoshima.
The nearly 600,000 citizens of the city donned coats and face masks, holding umbrellas to shelter them from the rain of ash that sat in piles on the sidewalk. Some splashed water to clear the ash from doorways. Garbage trucks circled the avenues, brushing dust off the streets.
Train service was stopped for a few hours on Monday, as cleanup crews swept volcanic leftovers from the tracks.
Over the weekend, the air was thick with the dust evening's gloom, but by the morning, skies had cleared.
A resident named Ms. Nakamura told the Wall Street Journal that the seats of her car were covered in volcanic ash, but she was relatively unfazed by it. That kind of thing is normal in her city, she said.
She even remarked that the volcano hadn't been terrible this year, even with 500 eruptions.
"We were just saying a week ago that the boy is behaving this year," she said, according to the WSJ.
Check out the Washington Post's slideshow of photos from the eruption here.
