------------------------------------------

Japanese pioneers named the lake Toya after the Ainu expression "to ya", which means "lakeshore, land around a lake".

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

Nakajima is a group of four islands in Lake Toya. The largest island of the four, O-shima, measures 9.6 kilometers in circumference and has a pier to the pleasure boats and Lake Toya Forest Museum.

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

Mount Yotei, literally "sheep-hoof mountain".

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

From a distance of 30km (19 miles)across Lake toya, the active volcano doesn't look it's 1,898 m (6,227 ft) hieght.

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

Mount Yotei is also known as Ezo Fuji because of its almost perfectly conical shape resembling Mt Fuji, making it one of the “local Fujis” found in different regions of Japan.

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

Showa Shinzan is one of Japan's youngest mountains. Accompanied by earthquakes, the mountain suddenly rose from a flat wheat field to its current height of 290 meters between 1943 and 1945.

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

From the Usuzan Toyako observation deck at the top of the Usa mountain rope way.

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

"Hell Valley" is a spectacular, appropriately named valley just above the town of Noboribetsu Onsen, which displays hot steam vents, sulfurous streams and other volcanic activity.

------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------

Oyunuma, a sulfurous pond with a surface temperature of 50 degrees Celsius and a smaller, even hotter, mud pond nearby. Flowing out of Oyunuma is a river called Oyunumagawa. Still hot, the river flows through the forest, making for an out-of-this-world sight.

------------------------------------------