The Yamagata city tourism association gives the usual peak here as late October to early November. Yamadera is the common name; the temple is properly Hoju-san Risshaku-ji, founded in 860 by imperial decree and opened by the monk Ennin, known posthumously as Jikaku Daishi.

The way up is a stone staircase of 1,015 steps. Allow an hour and a half for the round trip, more if you stop. Above the mountain gate alone there are over eight hundred steps, and partway up you pass the Ubado, where the old idea is that everything below is hell and everything above is paradise. Each step is supposed to remove a little of what you brought with you. Ordinary shoes are fine.

Near the top stands the Godaido, a platform pushed out from the cliff face on wooden props, and from it the whole valley opens at once. This is where most people stop and turn around, and it is where the colour reads best, because you are looking across the tops of the trees rather than up through them. The colour arrives at this height first and works down towards the station over the following fortnight.

Basho climbed here in the summer of 1689 and wrote the cicada poem on the way, the one about stillness soaking into rock. The steps he used are the steps that are still here. JR Yamadera station is five minutes away on foot, on the line between Yamagata and Sendai.