{"id":31217,"date":"2019-12-16T18:19:56","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T10:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=31217"},"modified":"2026-03-14T14:13:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T06:13:34","slug":"15-days-in-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-05-sapporo-mt-moiwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2019\/12\/16\/15-days-in-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-05-sapporo-mt-moiwa\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Days in Kanagawa & Hokkaido – Day 05 – Sapporo – Mt. Moiwa"},"content":{"rendered":"

There seems to be a varying list of what makes Japan\u2019s list of cities with the best evening and night views. The views in Mt. Moiwa, Nagasaki, and finally Hakodate seem to make the lists routinely. I\u2019d missed the chance of experiencing the Nagasaki view during the September trip this year. But since we\u2019ll be doing Hakodate in the last segment of this trip, checking two out of three isn\u2019t too bad LOL.<\/p>\n

The directions to get to Mt. Moiwa<\/strong> are pretty straightforward: take the streetcar (\u00a5200 for adults) to Ropeway Iriguchi stop – and not to worry if you can\u2019t understand Japanese, as the stop names are read out loud in English each time. From there, you can either do a ten-minute walk to the Mt. Moiwa base station itself (the ticketing office is on the fourth level), or hop on the complimentary shuttle bus that will bring visitors to the base station. If you have kids with you, my advice is that you absolutely do not even try to walk it: significant parts of it are fairly steep uphill, and it\u2019d just not be fun in winter.<\/p>\n

From the base station, you\u2019d take two different cars up to the summit. The Ropeway, last refurbished in 2011, can carry up to 66 persons per car, and will bring you three quarters of the way. There were quite a bit of visitors going up, so our still fairly uncrowded experience in the first five days in most places we\u2019ve visited was changing in a hurry i.e. time for a reality check that there would be unruly tourists who\u2019d make themselves heard. Visitors were making a beeline for the front or back of the car – the former affords views of the ropeway cable systems, while the latter provides views of Sapporo city as you ascend. Pick your poison!<\/p>\n

At Moiwa Chufuku Station, everyone will need to get off, and depending on your intentions, you\u2019d board a smaller \u2018mini\u2019 car that will bring you to the summit – Moiwa Sancho Station. A round trip to the summit costs \u00a51,700 and half that for kids – and it was even free for Peter. The vast majority of visitors will do the round trip to the summit, unless you\u2019re driving or have other creative ideas on how you\u2019d like to get to the summit.<\/p>\n

The viewing platform is on the top floor and up a few flights of stairs from where the mini-car drops you off. Once at the platform, you can get complete 360-degree perspectives of the entire area – including downtown Sapporo, and the other mountain ranges on the opposite side, including what looks like ski resorts in the distance. We reached the summit in the late afternoon, and stayed till early evening. The crowds weren\u2019t too bad when we first arrived, but they thickened from 4PM onwards – and most had the same idea we had: stay for the evening perspectives. Such that by the time we\u2019d finished and were ready to leave, long queues had formed for both segments of the descent down, and also the return trip with the complimentary bus shuttle.<\/p>\n

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Going up Mt. Moiwa via the ropeway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Getting increasingly elevated views of Sapporo. It wasn\u2019t a totally clear day, so some of the images in this post had some adjustments in the Haze and Clarity sliders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The track used by the mini-car segment of the ride from Moiwa Chufuku station onwards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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There’s a small snow play area for kids, accessible from the second floor of the summit station. Our kids busied themselves here while I stayed on the summit for an hour to take pictures.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Just before sunset. The weather was quite chilly at the summit, and there was also a small degree of wind. I would have attempted time-lapse shots like the ones I did at Fukuoka Tower in September were it not for the cold!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A little bell structure was a huge hit for visitors. A group from Thailand asked me for help to take pictures. Then followed by a Japanese middle-aged lady. Then another Mandarin-speaking lady. LOL.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The opposite side from Sapporo city. The distant hills and low mountain ranges look awesome.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A ski slope in the distance?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Sunset is here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And finally, one of the three best night city views in Japan. Your mileage might vary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is the view worth it? Well, I’ve got mixed feelings. You do get an expansive view of Sapporo city, and the evening-to-night view is impressive. The difficulty, however, is that unlike the other well- (or over-, depending on your point of view) developed cities of Japan like Tokyo and Osaka, there are far fewer distinguishing landmarks, buildings, or places for the temporary visitor to Sapporo. So, while capturing a decent enough evening shot of a city is a straightforward technical feat for me, the lack of distinctive subjects made me wonder what really am I shooting here.<\/p>\n

We returned to Odori Park next to check out the winter illuminations. Continued in the next post<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There seems to be a varying list of what makes Japan\u2019s list of cities with the best evening and night views. The views in Mt. Moiwa, Nagasaki, and finally Hakodate seem to make the lists routinely. I\u2019d missed the chance<\/p>\n

Read More 15 Days in Kanagawa & Hokkaido – Day 05 – Sapporo – Mt. Moiwa<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[662,608,613],"class_list":["post-31217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-kanagawa-hokkaido-japan-2019","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-sony-fe-24-105mm-f4-0","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/blog-2019-japan-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-05-A7_02782-sapporo-mt-moiwa.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38444,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31217\/revisions\/38444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}