@#8 caseyd, that’s INCREDIBLE. Please return with pics!

Hey, everyone, tomorrow’s episode — part two — is pretty incredible. I hope you enjoy it.

If you are interested in critters from Japanese folklore other than the kappa, there are other documents I have on scribd about them.

This one is the most popular one (and for good reason):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3830153/Japanese-Folk-Tales-by-Yanagita-Kunio-translated-by-Fanny-Hagin-Mayer

kitsune (fox):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3870634/Kitsune-Japans-Fox-of-Mystery-Romance-and-Humor-by-Kiyoshi-Nozaki

tanuki (usually called a “raccoon dog” in English):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3832709/The-Badger-in-Japanese-Folklore

then there’s this:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3830200/The-Goblin-Fox-and-Badger-and-other-Witch-Animals-of-Japan

plus other documents related to Japanese folklore, legends, etc:

http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/1502051/folder/32339

That part seemed to be “canonical”, but she also had a theory that their appearance in Japanese folklore coincided a little too neatly with the arrival of Jesuit monks with curiously similar haircuts, some from Capuchin orders, thus “Capu”=”kappa”. Apparently, some Catholic priests’ reputations for certain proclivities are cross-cultural and span centuries, hence the butt thing. One can only speculate as to where the cucumbers come in.

Has anyone else heard this take, or was this “original research” on her part?

They need to add that to the liner notes for Inuyasha.

There are no such thinks as monsters.. except zombies.

(scanning old pictos)

Oh, and Antinous, CaseyD: You. Have. To. Post. Those. Stories. :)

Back in the 80s, I was reading the travel section of the Sunday paper when I came across an earth mysteries and Arthurian legend sites tour of the UK that was starting in a week. I called and was told that I could get half price for the tour and the airfare because it was a last minute booking. So I begged my boss for three weeks off and booked the tour. Marion Zimmer Bradley was meant to be the celebrity hostess for the tour.

I was waiting at SFO when I noticed a rather squashy woman holding a copy of Mists of Avalon. I asked her if she was going on the tour and she identified herself as MZB. I made the mistake of mentioning that I had just read one of her Darkover novels, for which she offered me condolences.

My last minute reservations about taking a package tour were alleviated when I saw the freak show (and I mean that in the best possible way) that would be sharing my motor coach: a documentary film crew from Santa Fe, matching lesbian judges from Florida, a real live gypsy and a woman who would later prove to have been friends with Beckett and Ionesco.

Excitement was high. There were only about ten of us on a motor coach meant for thirty-something. Almost everyone was interesting. We would be touring neolithic monuments. We had The Authoress of The Mists of Avalon there to grace us with her presence. What could go wrong?

The tour in general could scarcely have been more fun. We saw things that hadn’t had tourists since Hadrian built his wall. We had guest experts travel with us to lecture on history, culture and metaphysics. We had a psaltery player to serenade us with medieval music every evening. And we had Marion.

It turns out that Marion had an unusual personality. By the end of day two, I was the only person who wasn’t referring to her as ‘it’. At least in front of her face. She was the most stubborn, rigid, frustrated, angry, rules-obsessed person most of us had ever met. We got a lecture at breakfast one day about how the government should re-educate ‘night owls’ because it’s unnatural to want to stay up once it’s dark. In an episode eerily presaging the Dursleys, one of tourists mentioned having a dream about a purple cow and was roundly abused for giving in to unrealistic fantasies.

She and I got along famously, because I ♥ crazy people. But I’ll always have the image of a loudly flatulent, poncho-clad misanthrope raking her baleful glance over a world of rule-breakers and wrong-doers.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3830201/The-Metamorphosis-of-the-Kappa

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3830212/The-Kappa-Legend-A-Comparative-Ethological-Study-on-the-Japanese-WaterSpirit-Kappa-and-Its-Habit-of-Trying-to-Lure-Horses-into-the-Water

(full disclosure– that’s my scribd account where they are located)

FYI, here’s an online guide to Japanese obake with some nice vector illustrations. Not as nice as the book BB links to, but still nicely done:

http://www.obakemono.com/index.php

I loved walking in Tokyo; I walked for miles every night watching the steam condense on the wildly lit towers.

The Hawkwind in my Walkman guided me.

I finally got to the working class neighborhood where the temple was supposed to be. Sure enough were were bronze Kappa things along the street. But after that zeroing in on the temple was a hard go.

IIRC the street numbers are based on construction (re-construction, this was firebombed hmm? ) sequence. My guide book was just good enough to get me to somewhere w/in a mile or so.

In the Flickr set you’ll see the street sign I finally found.

Going down the near by alley I found a gate with a more telling sign. Further down the alley it opened up into a courtyard – on the right a smallish building.

The scale of this was quite a surprise after the other temples I had wandered into. At first I thought it was someone’s small house.

After all the mutterings I expected something far more gruesome. Instead it was beaky garden gnomes with holes in their heads. and turtle shells. and claws. cucumbers lay about. the air reeked of fermented rice.

http://flickr.com/photos/badubadu/sets/72157608528880709/

After some befuddlement I decided to make an offering.

I lacked a cucumber, so I scurried back up the alley to a nearby liquor store of some sort and bought some Sake. I tried to explain that it was for the Kappa, and that I was an AI grog trying to appease the local distributors, but, ahem. well. After a bit they did sell me a small bottle.

I scooted back down the alley, poured sake into the waiting cups and dashed off the remainder.

The following workday I told my hosts of my adventure. They were pretty surprised and we consulted a map to verify my report.

Apparently we all decided that the Kappa could be put to good use. If you remembered to bow to the Kappa it would bow back – and lose the water in its cranial depression ( divot, or monk’s haircut thingy discussed previously ) which was the magical power source when on land.

There was more muttering and goofyness but we eventually got back to work. The name stuck. I think one or two of the guys did pass out, as was their wont. There was a fair amount of that going on.

My last day I was given the gift of the Kappa. It remains in a place of honor, next to all the Mozilla fetishes in our household house.

Perhaps, Xeni, your correspondent is in need of sake and cucumbers? This trip was in the day of compuserve dialup to the Well, so perhaps the requirements have changed.