About 200 people evacuated from their homes in Sobetsu because of volcanic activity on nearby Mount Usu gathered at a local community center Saturday to listen to a report on the state of the mountain from the Coordinating Committee for the Prediction of Volcanic Eruptions, a government panel of volcano experts.
Hiromu Okada, chairman of the panel and a professor at Hokkaido University, and Tadashi Okada, also a professor at the same university, were explaining latest events on the mountain in person for the first time and showed a video recording taken from a helicopter.
According to the experts, eruptions continued to rock the western flank of the mountain.
On Friday, residents of Sobetsu began moving into temporary housing units.