On a mountain, autumn refuses to hold still: the top and the bottom of Oyama are never on the same schedule, and can look like different weeks on the same day. The colour arrives in the middle of November and holds through the end of the month, place by place. Oyama sits in the Tanzawa-Oyama Quasi-National Park and has been an object of worship in its own right for centuries.

The image most associated with it is the approach to Oyamadera, where maples line the stone steps. Looking up, the colour closes over the stairway; looking back down on the descent, it opens out over the valley. The same staircase gives you two different mountains, one on the way up and one on the way down.

The lower shrine of Oyama Afuri also has maples, and from its terrace Sagami Bay lies open below. In the last third of November both the temple and the lower shrine are lit after dark, so the leaves and the lights of the plain appear together.

The Edo period had a custom of pilgrimage to this mountain, and the present approach follows that route. It is stairs most of the way. Choose footwear accordingly, and know that the cable car does not remove the climbing so much as move where it starts. The pilgrims took the stairs. The view was their reward too.