The steam here is warm enough to hold a season back. Kirishima Onsenkyo is a collective name for nine hot springs scattered across the southwest flank of the Kirishima range, all of them between 600 and 850 metres above sea level. Maruo is the middle of it: an information desk, a few shops, somewhere to eat, and a foot bath where people sit with eggs cooked over a steam vent. Colour on the slopes around it comes in the middle of November.

Not everywhere at the same moment, though. Where the vapour rises thickest the heat delays the turning, so the trees closest to the water hold their green a while after the hillside above them has gone red and copper. It is a small thing. You notice it from the foot bath, with your back to the town, looking at two different autumns at once.

The other reason to stop is a waterfall on the road between Maruo and the Kirishima shrine. Maruo Falls is 23 metres high and 16 across, and what comes over the lip is not river water but the run-off of the hot springs above it, which makes it a yu-no-taki, a waterfall of bath water. In autumn the spray hangs in front of the maples and takes their colour for a moment before it lands.

You can see it from the road. There is a car park, the walk down takes about five minutes, and on a cold day the whole gorge is smoking. Nine springs, one mountain, and an autumn that arrives in instalments. Give it an afternoon in the middle of November.