Kappa Country
Seven places to meet the river child, from the pool at Tōno to the port where the kappa of Kyushu came ashore
7 places
The kappa is the yokai with the most addresses. In the north it is the red-faced creature of the Tōno tales, recorded in 1910 at a pool you can still stand beside; in the south it is a whole people, nine thousand strong, that came ashore at a river port and moved from one river to the next with the permission of lords. These seven places follow it from the pool to the port, and end with the kappa a town built for its own folklorist, which rises from a pond on a timer.
Kappa-buchi and Jōkenji カッパ淵と常堅寺
A quiet pool on a stream behind a temple in Tōno, the place the town points to when it tells its kappa tales.
Yokai you will meet: Kappa
Denshōen 伝承園
A folk park built around an old L-shaped farmhouse, with a hall of a thousand silkworm deities and a room for the storyteller whose tales became Tōno Monogatari.
Yokai you will meet: Zashiki-warashi, Kappa
Tōno Folktale Museum とおの物語の館
A sake storehouse turned into a hall of tales, with the inn where the folklorist stayed and a stage where storytellers tell the tales in the dialect they were told in.
Yokai you will meet: Zashiki-warashi, Kappa, Yamauba, Tengu
The Kappa Landing Stone at Yatsushiro 河童渡来之碑（徳渕の津）
Two stones by a bridge at the old river port where, the tale says, nine thousand kappa came ashore from China under their chief Kyūsenbō.
Kurume Suitengū 久留米水天宮（全国総本宮）
The head shrine of the water gods of Japan, on the bank of the Chikugo river, where the kappa of the river are said to have taken service.
Yokai you will meet: Kappa
Tanushimaru Station, the Kappa Station 田主丸駅（河童駅舎）
A country station built in the shape of a kappa's head, in a town on the Chikugo river that has made the river child its own.
Yokai you will meet: Kappa
Fukusaki: Yanagita Kunio's Birthplace and the Yokai Benches 福崎町（柳田國男・松岡家記念館と妖怪ベンチ）
The town where the founder of Japanese folklore studies was born, which has filled its park and streets with the yokai he wrote about.
Hours, admission and closing days change, and this site does not list them. The link goes to the place's own page, with the date we last checked it.