Climb the mountain and the autumn fast-forwards. Hakone is built on steep ground, and the difference in altitude between Miyanoshita at its foot and Lake Ashi near the pass is enough to stagger the turning of the leaves by two full weeks. Ride the old switchback railway uphill and you watch the season advance through the window, the maples reddening a little more with every hairpin bend. At the top, Lake Ashi holds an inverted Fuji on still days, its summit just beginning to whiten, and the red and gold of the slopes frame the reflection like a border drawn around a photograph. Everywhere you look the view is almost too composed—the garden of a hillside museum, a bridge over a gorge, the window of a hot-spring inn fogged at the edges with steam. Tokyo is ninety minutes away. You could come and go in a day, and many do. But step off the road and into the trees and the air changes, thins, cools, and it becomes briefly possible to forget how close the city is—which is, perhaps, the whole reason the city keeps coming back.