Kanba Falls does one thing, and does it vertically. The water drops a hundred and ten metres down a single rock face, twenty metres across, without stepping or splitting — a plain white line drawn from top to bottom. In the middle of November the colour arrives from both sides of that line: maple turning red, katsura turning yellow, each growing at its own height on the gorge walls, so the colours stack instead of mixing. The peak holds from mid to late month.

The falls are on the national list of a hundred notable waterfalls, and among the larger drops in western Japan, but the numbers matter less than the geometry. One white vertical, colour pressing in from the flanks. It reads like a hanging scroll somebody unrolled down the cliff.

A path runs up the gorge as far as the basin. The further in you walk, the more the sound takes over, until the falls stop being a picture and become a room you are standing inside. Then walk back out and watch them shrink into composition again. Both versions are true. Do them in that order.

Wild macaques live around the gorge. The rule is simple: do not feed them, and give them room. The monkeys have their own autumn to get through. Leave them to it, and keep yours.