Unfortunately - the ropeway, roadway and lookout will all be closed from April to Sept-Oct 2011 for renovation. That's a long wait!
At 531 m the view is spectacular. Actually, it's not too dissimilar to Adelaide's Mt Lofty which stands at ariound 710 m and has a similar outlook. Strangely, there's a few similarities between Sapporo and my home town of Adelaide... I might go through the similarities at the end of this trip... a snapshot from Mt Lofty is shown below (sorry no night-shots)...
Now - back to Moiwa-yama; I have to say that whilst the views were great, the weather was quite cold for this time of year (not quite up to Hakodate cold... but it was pretty cool up there at night).
Perhaps Moiwa-yama is most famous as a romantic location to take your date - and stare longingly into each others smiley-face eyes... and the drive up to the summit can inspire some romantic thoughts... ok, the starry skies are missing in most large light-saturated Japanese cities, but this is the closest thing you'll find.
