Nikko: a shogun's tomb inside a cedar forest

There is an old Japanese line — never say kekko until you've seen Nikko — kekko meaning splendid, and the boast is about one building complex in particular. Toshogu is the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the shogun who unified the country, and it abandons the restraint of most Japanese religious architecture entirely: black lacquer, gold leaf, and more than five hundred carvings crowded onto the Yomeimon gate, which people once stood in front of until dusk. Two of those carvings are famous far beyond Nikko — the three wise monkeys on the sacred stable, and the sleeping cat above the passage to Ieyasu's tomb, up 200 stone steps through the trees.

Nearby, Rinno-ji temple keeps three gilded Buddhas nearly eight metres tall, and Futarasan Shrine guards the vermilion Shinkyo bridge arching over the fast green Daiya river. The whole approach runs beneath cedars planted in the seventeenth century, an avenue that still stretches for kilometres along the old highway.

Above the town the road climbs the Irohazaka hairpins to a plateau that feels like a different country. Kegon Falls drops ninety-seven metres from Lake Chuzenji, best reached by the lift cut down through the cliff to a platform at its foot; the Senjogahara marshland has boardwalks through grass and birch; and Yumoto has sulphurous hot springs at the top. Late October turns the whole plateau orange and jams the hairpins with traffic. Snow closes in by December, and Toshogu under it, with the cedars weighted down, is the quietest the place ever gets.