There seems to be a varying list of what makes Japan’s 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’d missed the chance of experiencing the Nagasaki view during the September trip this year. But since we’ll be doing Hakodate in the last segment this trip, checking two out of three isn’t too bad LOL.
The directions to get to Mt. Moiwa are pretty straight-forward: take the street car (¥200 for adults) to Ropeway Iriguchi stop – and not to worry if you can’t 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 (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 up-hill, and it’d just not be fun in winter.
From the base station, you’d take two different cars up to the summit. The Ropeway, last refurbished in 2011, can carry up to 66 persons a car, and will bring you three quarters of the way. There was quite a bit of visitors going up, so our still fairly uncrowded experience in the first five days in most places we’ve visited was changing in a hurry i.e. time for a reality check that there would be unruly tourists who’d make themselves heard. Visitors were making a beeline for the front or back of the car – the former afford views of the ropeway cable systems, while the latter provides view of Sapporo city as you ascend. Pick your poison!
At Moiwa Chufuku Station, everyone will need to get off, and depending on your intentions, you’d board a smaller ‘mini’ car that will bring you to the summit – Moiwa Sancho Station. A round trip to the summit costs ¥1,700 and half that for kids – and it was even free for Peter. The vast majority of visitors will do the round trip to summit, unless you’re driving or have other creative ideas on how you’d like to get to the summit.
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 a 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’t too bad when we first arrived, but it thickened from 4PM onwards – and most had the same idea we had: stay for the evening perspectives. Such that by the time we’d 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.
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 straight forward technical feat for me, the lack of distinctive subjects made me wonder what really am I shooting here.
We returned to Odori Park next to check out the winter illuminations. Continued in the next post!
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