Jozankei Onsen

This guide to Jozankei Onsen near Sapporo starts at a hand bath shaped like a grinning kappa's mouth, where visitors chant an old phrase and make a wish. It traces the story behind the ritual back to a boy named Seyama who was pulled under while fishing in a deep pool of the Toyohira River, and to the dream his father had at the memorial a year later. Roughly two dozen kappa statues, a courting couple, a mother and child, a singer, a philosopher, now hide through the streets of the town that grew up around that pool.