You cannot drive into Kamikochi. The valley sits at about 1,500 metres in the Northern Alps, and private cars have been turned back at the mouth of the Kama tunnel all year round for decades. You leave the car at Sawando or at Akandana in Hirayu and take a shuttle bus or a taxi for the last half hour. It sounds like an inconvenience, and then you arrive and understand that it is the whole point.

The colour arrives from above and works its way down. Around the end of September the slopes of the Hotaka range begin to turn, and the peak along the Azusa river follows in the middle and later part of October. By the time the larches between Taisho Pond and the Kappa Bridge have gone gold, the high ground is already bare. Two seasons run at once here, stacked by altitude.

The walking is easy. Level paths run the length of the valley — past Tashiro Bridge, through the Dakesawa marsh, into the open ground at Konashidaira — and none of it asks anything of your legs. Kamikochi holds two national designations at once, as a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special Natural Monument, which is rare. But the designation is not what you notice first.

What you notice first is the quiet. No engines, no car parks, only the river and the boots on the boardwalk. Autumn here moves at the speed of walking, and so, for one day, do you.