A 1967 outdoor moving walkway hauls you up Mt. Yokote's summit for a sea-of-clouds view before 9am, then a crumpet cafe and Japan's highest bakery.
The Yokoteyama Skylator (横手山スカイレーター) is an outdoor moving walkway — a 200-metre “sidewalk that climbs a mountain” — installed in 1967 on the slope of Mt. Yokote (2,307m) in the Shiga Kōgen ski area, straddling the Nagano side of the Gunma–Nagano border. Paired with a short chairlift, it carries visitors the rest of the way to the summit without a hike, making it one of the easiest ways in Japan to stand above the clouds.
Why It’s Interesting
Mt. Yokote sits right beside Shibu Pass, the highest point on Japan’s national highway network, and shares its dawn sea-of-clouds (unkai) phenomenon: cold air pools in the valleys overnight and, on calm mornings, leaves the peaks poking through a flat white expanse below. The Skylator itself is also a small piece of infrastructure history — it’s among the oldest moving walkways still operating anywhere. At the summit, Japan’s first crumpet specialty cafe and a bakery that claims the title of Japan’s highest sit next to a viewing terrace, so the reward for the ride up isn’t just scenery.
Best Time to Visit
The lift runs roughly late April/May through late October and closes for winter snow. Within that season, cloud-sea sightings are most reliable right at sunrise and tend to burn off within an hour or two — plan to be on the first lift up if that’s the goal, and treat any time after mid-morning as scenery-only.
Getting There
The base station sits at the “Nozoki” stop on Route 292, the same road and parking cluster as Shibu Pass — a car is effectively required, since there’s no train and only a seasonal bus from Yudanaka Station. Once you’re up, Jigokudani Monkey Park and Shibu Onsen are both roughly 30–40 minutes back down the mountain, making a cloud-sea sunrise here an easy anchor for a full day in the area.
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
A traveler called ghost popsicle wrote to me with the exact plan — Yokoteyama in September, chasing the cloud sea, a full day to fill afterward. A squirrel cannot ignore a mail addressed by name like that.
I rode up folded into someone's backpack pocket, which felt appropriate for a machine that has been quietly moving people uphill since 1967 — one of the oldest working moving walkways anywhere, they tell me, though it certainly doesn't creak like it. At the top the valley had vanished under a flat white sea, only the far peaks showing, and I sat on the terrace railing with a crumpet the size of my own head from the cafe up there, then found the bakery that claims to be the highest in Japan and sampled its case with what I'd call professional thoroughness.
Other visitors keep saying the same thing: get there for sunrise, because the clouds start burning off within an hour or two — matching exactly what ghost popsicle had already guessed about the 9am cutoff. Shibu Pass shares the same parking area, so the two are one stop, not two, and it's a short drive down to Jigokudani or Shibu Onsen once the clouds are gone and the day is still young.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
You might also like
Shibu Pass
Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park
Shibu Onsen
Onioshidashi Park
Nearby discoveries
Chatsubomi Moss Park
Takasaki Byakue Daikannon
Nagatoro River Rafting
Tateyama Snow Wall (Yuki-no-Otani)
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