Tsuchinoko

The tsuchinoko is a short, thick snake with a big head reported from across Japan. Towns and villages have offered rewards for one caught alive, and the largest, 200 million yen, went unclaimed.

Kobe Shimbun describes the tsuchinoko as snake-like, with a large head, a fat body and a short length. English Wikipedia says it moved from yōkai to cryptid in the late 1980s, when reported sightings spread across Japan, mostly from Shimokitayama village in Nara Prefecture. Kazuo Nozaki, a village councillor there, started a Tsuchinoko Expedition in 1988, with 1 million yen on offer for a live one and 300,000 yen for its skin.

Gifu Shimbun says Higashishirakawa village drew national attention around 1989, after the village newsletter ran a tsuchinoko feature for the year of the snake. The issue carried villagers' accounts of seeing it and headlines about a grey snake with a silver sheen. The village holds a Tsuchinoko Festa. Mainichi Shimbun reported in 2023 that the 31st festa, the first in four years because of COVID, found nothing.

Kobe Shimbun reports that the former town of Chikusa offered 200 million yen in 1992 for a tsuchinoko taken alive. Nobody collected it, and the prize was later withdrawn.

Okayama Prefecture's tourism site says that in 2000 a man mowing grass in a rice field found an odd snake, and its dead body was sent to a university professor to examine. The site says Akaiwa city, holding that it looked clearly unlike other snakes, insists the creature exists and keeps running capture campaigns.