The Yamanashi prefectural tourism site gives the maples here as early to late November — a long band for a single place, and it holds because the lake is big enough that no two shores turn together.

Kawaguchiko is one of the component assets of the Mount Fuji World Heritage listing, and its usefulness in autumn is a matter of geometry. The mountain stands on the far side of the water, so from the northern shore the peak, the lake surface and the coloured trees line up into one frame without any walking. Photographers have known this for a century and the good spots are neither secret nor empty.

The lake keeps a calendar of its own through the year: cherry in spring, lavender at the start of summer, kochia turning red in the middle of autumn. The maples are the last of that sequence, and the one that draws the biggest crowds. The water doubles whatever colour there is.

It is fifteen minutes on foot from Kawaguchiko station on the Fujikyu line, and twenty minutes by car from the Kawaguchiko interchange on the Chuo expressway. Parking is the constraint rather than the walking, and in the second and third weeks of November it fills early. Come before the buses and the shore is quiet enough to hear the water.