Oishi Kogen

A visit to Oishi Kogen is easy to underplan — bring more time, and less certainty about what you'll find, than you'd expect.

Oishi Kogen is a plateau at about 870 metres straddling Kimino and Aridagawa, and what grows on it is susuki — Japanese pampas grass, over a wide open ridge with no trees. From early October to mid November it turns, and the whole plateau moves: silver in flat light, and in the low sun of morning and evening a solid sheet of gold.

It is generally called the best susuki field in the Kansai region and it is a prefectural natural park. The ridge is walkable end to end, there is a viewpoint rock called Hiage-iwa that most of the photographs are taken from, and on clear days you can see the Kii channel and across to Shikoku. Parking is free, there is a mountain lodge at the top, and outside the autumn window there is essentially nobody there.