Yamanashi's prefectural tourism office gives the season here as mid-October to late November. Shosenkyo is a gorge with real vertical relief, and the colour starts at the head of it and works down over four kilometres of riverside path, from Tenjinmori at the bottom to the Sengataki falls at the top. Whenever you come inside that window, something in the valley is turning.

The walk is the attraction rather than any single viewpoint. Kakuenpo, a stone tower left standing where the softer rock around it eroded away, rises above the middle section, and the place to see it square on is a rock platform called Yume-no-Matsushima. Further along is Tenkorin, a stretch of ground that returns a hollow drum note when you stamp on it. The falls at the top drop thirty metres and are named for Chang'e, the woman of the Chinese story who went to the moon.

The bridge at the entrance is worth a minute. Nagatorobashi was completed in 1925, and of the three prewar concrete arch road bridges left in Yamanashi it is the oldest. The path beyond it exists because of a man named Osada En'emon, who cut a road through the gorge in the late Edo period so that people and horses could pass, and who opened a teahouse partway along it.

Buses run from JR Kofu station and take about thirty minutes, which puts the gorge within a morning of the city. There is a ropeway near the falls, and a street of shops at the top end. Below that the path is quiet.