Sapporo is a city of two million people, and this gorge is inside its municipal limits. Jozankei sits about an hour by road from the centre, where the Toyohira River has cut down through the hills and a row of hot-spring inns has grown along the water. It opened in the Meiji era, when a monk named Bisen Jozan found the springs; the place took his name and kept it.

October turns the whole valley over. The view people come for is from Futami Suspension Bridge—red paint, green water, and both banks going at once—which is a five-minute walk from the inns and therefore reachable in slippers, before breakfast, by anyone staying the night.

For the season the tourism association runs shuttle buses out to five separate areas: the Jozankei dam, Hoheikyo, Hakkenzan, the Sapporo Kokusai ski ground, and the farm district. Most of them are hard to reach without a car the rest of the year.

Close is not the same as good. Being an hour from a large city means the gorge fills on weekends, and the bridge can be shoulder to shoulder by ten in the morning. The counter to that is simple and available only to people who sleep here—walk out early, before the buses, when the colour is doing the same thing to nobody in particular. Then go back in and get in the bath.