Toomanywires

A friend told me to keep an eye out for beaver-like creatures that roam the banks of the Kamo River. I need little encouragement to seek out unfamiliar animals. I saw a large snake on one of my evening runs just last week, and was thoroughly delighted; my tanuki encounters earlier in the year will likely remain 2024 highlights. Anyway, as you might expect, I was well up for spotting this mystery river-dweller. It was on the second night of drinks on the banks of the Kamogawa, a river which runs through central Kyoto, that I spotted one darting through the grass. Unbothered by the hundreds of revellers, many of whom were in town to attend annual indie game show BitSummit, it came within a metre or two of our group. It must've been 2 a.m., and we were several drinks deep, so at first I wasn't sure whether I was seeing quite what I thought I was seeing. So I got closer and, sure enough, it was a big rat-looking, beaver-ish creature. I pointed it out to the group, but they weren...