Hello again! This time I’ve decided to head back to Japan, to talk about the mischievous (and sometimes deadly) kappa.

So, what are kappa? Basically, kappa are water spirits that look kind of like bipedal turtle monsters, about the size of a small child. Most notably is a cavity on the top of their head, which contains water from whatever river they live in. If the water ever dries up or is spilled out, it kind of tends to weaken them quite a bit. Otherwise, despite actually being quite small, kappa are actually considerably stronger than the average man, and thus enjoy engaging in sumo wrestling. They like to eat cucumbers; in fact this love is immortalized in kappamaki, sushi rolls where the primary ingredient is cucumber

As a side note, kappa actually have about 80 different names depending on which region you’re talking about. For the sake of my sanity and yours, I’m just going to go with kappa.

Kappa are portrayed as mischievous, if not downright malevolent. You see, they not only enjoy wrasslin’ and cucumbers, but also drowning people and livestock. They also like to lure people in to drink their blood steal their shirikodama, a mystical ball located in, of all things, the butthole. Needless to say, they’re not really creatures that you’re going to want to run into.

There are a number of ways to defeat or repel a kappa. One of the best known ways is to bow to it. This is because kappa, despite being at best annoying and at worst murderous, are unfailingly polite and will feel compelled to return the gesture. This causes the water in its head to spill out, so they have to run back to their river to refill it. They also have an aversion to iron, ginger, and sesame, so those could be used as kappa repellent. Or you could just rip their arms off, which is apparently really easy to do.

Also, if the picture above is to be believed, they’re also repelled by farts. Then again, a lot of things are.

Besides Japanese folklore, kappa tend to show up quite a bit in Japanese pop culture as well. Final Fantasy VI, for instance, has a status effect that turns characters into kappa. In the Animal Crossing series a character called Kapp’n shows up in a few of the games, though the English language version just calls him a turtle. They also sometimes make their way into American stuff too; they’re referenced in the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, for instance.

What’s interesting is that this creature bears similarities to mythological beings from other cultures. In China, they’re typically called shui gui, or water ghost. Also, while they don’t bear a similar appearance, they do behave similarly to the Scottish kelpie, what with the drowning of the people.

So, that is the rundown on Kappa. Honestly, I’m still kind of stuck on the butthole thing, because this is now the second Japanese mythological creature I’ve talked about that involved anuses. It just seems kind of weird to me that they keep popping up.