Residents of the municipalities ringing Mount Usu in southwestern Hokkaido held ceremonies Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of the volcano erupting.

The tourist association of the Lake Toya hot spring resort said it plans to designate March 31 as the area's own Disaster Prevention Day and pass on the knowledge and experiences learned from the eruption -- which caused no casualties -- to future generations.

The association organized a symposium at which volcano experts discussed the possibility of utilizing the volcanic eruption to benefit the area's tourism industry.

In the afternoon, a group of volunteer runners from Kobe, which suffered serious damage in the Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 1995, presented Abuta Mayor Yoshio Nagasaki with a flame dubbed the "Light of Hope" carried in a lantern in the form of Kobe's Port Tower landmark.