Do you know that Issie, the Japanese Loch Ness monster, lives in Ikeda Lake?

According to a legend, the mare Issie, or sometimes Isshi, lived near Lake Ikeda, located on Kyushu Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, with her foal. When the latter was kidnapped by a samurai, Issie looked everywhere for him without being able to find him. Desperate, she threw herself into Lake Ikeda and her sadness turned her into a sea monster, who sometimes surfaced to look for her missing child.

The monster's story ignites when, in 1978, nearly twenty people, who went to the same ceremony, say they saw a black creature with two bumps moving on the surface of the lake. The same year, another person took a picture of a strange shape in the water at the same place. The local tourist office then seized the case to make it an attraction, going as far as building a statue of the creature, and giving it the nickname Issie-kun. His name was given by analogy with Nessie, the monster of Loch Ness, and the creature became a kind of local mascot and we can now buy stuffed animals in his image, play in a kindergarten with the shape of the monster , ... To be fair, Ikeda Lake is famous for having in its waters some of the largest eels in the world, their size being up to two meters long!

View of Lake Ikeda
 

Even more surprising, Issie seems to have a cousin called Kusshi in northern Japan, in Hokkaido. Indeed, the latter was seen several times in the 1970s on Lake Kussharo by more than thirty people. Kusshi had the same destiny as his cousin, he has now become a local mascot.

Kussharo Lake edges frozen in winter
 

Following the footsteps of their legend, take the opportunity to admire the beauty of the two lakes around which you can find many onsens (natural hot springs). Lake Kussharo is also beautiful in winter because despite its size, it becomes completely frozen, as for the other seasons, it becomes a preferred place of residence for many swans.