Hokkaido: Mt. Tomamu and Unkai Terrace

We rented a little condo at Mt. Tomamu through Airbnb. Mt. Tomamu is home to the Hoshino Resort Ski area. In the summer the main attraction (besides the beautiful surrounding area) is Unkai Terrace, or the Sea of Clouds. I desperately wanted to witness this phenomenon for myself.

Seth and I woke up at 4:30 am and greeted the drizzly morning. Fortunately we were sharing our room with friends and they were not interested waking up so early. They let us go alone and stayed asleep with all the kids.

The walkway connecting our building to the main office

The sign outside the gondola entrance. Says Unkai Terrace and some other stuff

On the gondola up to the terrace

This is what we hoped to see:

This is what we actually saw:

Sadly, this isn't an accidental pocket shot. This is the view we got from the terrace. No unkai. Just fog. It just wasn't the right weather conditions.

We wore our own cheap rain jackets, but they provided really nice jackets.

They didn't actually let us walk all the way up the peak.

 This is designed to make you feel like you are walking on the clouds. I'm sure it's cool during the unkai.

 Titanic shot.

I told him to look contemplatively out the window. 

After we got back to our room, the weather started to clear up. This is the view from our room window. Beautiful.

There was a little walking trail right next to the parking lot. The kids enjoyed exploring a bit while the dads packed up the car.

It was unfortunate that we weren't able to see a Sea of Clouds. It was great though to be able to meet up with friends on this trip. We are also glad that the weather did clear up so we could spend the afternoon at the lavender fields.