Kappa
Culture: Japanese
Behavior: Hostile
Characteristic: Aquatic
Kappa are essentially water spirits of Japan although they look rather like a turtle. The Kappa are a sort of cross between a turtle and a monk. The most peculiar feature about them is the bowl they have on their head. Also their head is rather like a monkey's head, sometimes with a beak. they have the hair cut of a western monk.
The difficulty about being a Kappa is that you must always keep your head bowl filled with water and your face wet. For this reason Kappa seldom stay on land for very long.
Kappas harass travelers on the road but with children they are much more cruel. They drag children into water to drown them.
Despite his serious and malevolent nature, there are some strange things about Kappas:
- You ward off a Kappa by writing your family name on a cucumber and throwing it into the area of which a Kappa lives. (This way it won't eat your children but perhaps the cucumber instead).
- To kill it, you trick it into bowing or standing on its head, which causes the Kappa to spill the water out of its head bowl.