Mount Asama was hit by another small eruption Friday, spitting up ash three days after the volcano straddling Nagano and Gunma prefectures came to life earlier in the week, the Meteorological Agency said.

The eruption deposited a small amount of ash on a monitoring camera on the western side of the 2,568-meter mountain, although no variation was seen in seismometer and other instrument readings.

Cloud cover prevented the agency from surveying the crater or the smoke, but its alert level remained at 2 on the scale to 5, meaning that peopled are not advised to approach the volcano's crater and that large rocks could land within 2 km of it.

In the meantime, volcanic earthquakes continue to take place at the mountain, including some tremors that reflect magma activity, the agency said.