Wonderful panoramic view of the marshes, after climbing around 100 steps. Free entry. There's a few free parking spaces, along with a lavatory.

Quite a challenging climb to the observatory, however the views were very beautiful.

You have to go up some steep stairs to get to the obsevation, but the scenery was not that satisfying, but maybe it depends on the season.

The view at Kottaro Observatory is definitely magnificient. Strongly recommended to visit.

+1

The 5 star isn't for the observatory. It is for the road that it is on. We managed to see a lot of wildlife on it. We drove up from the entrance of the small path on Lake Toro. The observatory itself was really meh. Nice scenery but not epic. Upon reaching the top - I realised that I am not going to be able to see any individual tanchos from so high up even with my 10x zoom - too large an area to cover. It probably would be worth a trip in the winter when the transit population is in Hokkaido and huddled together in the marsh but quite a number of the steps up are damaged, some of the slope quite steep - so I wouldn't really recommend going up in winter if you are concerned about safety. The total climb is 4 x the first set of steps that you can see when you are standing at the toilet pavilion at the bottom. :)