The Aizu tourism bureau gives the usual peak here as late October to early November. To-no-Hetsuri is a river cliff on the Okawa, and hetsuri is a local dialect word meaning a dangerous ledge. That is a plain description rather than a poetic one. The rock has been cut and weathered for something like a million years, and what is left stands in a row of pale columns above the water.

It was made a national natural monument in 1943. Each of the rocks carries a name, listed on the board at the entrance, and once you have read them it is hard to see the cliff as a single object again. A suspension bridge crosses to the base. On the far side the path runs inside a hollowed arcade cut into the rock face, narrow underfoot, with a rail to hold. On a windy day the bridge moves.

What makes the colour work here is the combination rather than the maples alone. The rock is almost white, the pines stay green, and the maples turn over the top of both. Three colours in one frame is not a common arrangement in Japan, where autumn photographs tend to be red on red.

Aizu Railway stops at To-no-Hetsuri station, five minutes on foot, on the line running south from Aizu-Wakamatsu towards Nikko. Ouchi-juku, the thatched post town, is twenty minutes away by car and usually visited the same day, so the car park here fills in the middle of the day and empties by four. Come early. The low light on the rock is better in the morning.