Enakyo Gorge Cruise

Enakyo Gorge Cruise rewards patience — the view most people describe isn't the one you get by rushing.

Enakyo is the reservoir of the Oi dam, completed in 1924 as the first large concrete dam in Japan, which flooded a stretch of the Kiso river and left the granite formations along its banks standing half in water. They have names — Battleship Rock, Lion Rock, Screen Rock — and the whole thing was named one of Japan's hundred landscapes.

The cruise runs about fourteen kilometres from the jetty near Sazanami Park. A jet boat takes thirty minutes and a covered yakatabune takes an hour, and both go out along the same line of rock faces. In November the maples on the cliffs come down to the water, which is the point of doing it by boat rather than from the road above. Boats leave every half hour, hourly in winter, and Tuesday is the rest day.