Lake Nojiri

In 1948 an innkeeper on Lake Nojiri picked up an odd lump from the lakebed, decided it was too strange to be a hot-water bottle, and showed it to the local school principal. It was the molar of a Naumann elephant, an Ice Age species. The first organised dig followed in March 1962, and by 2018 there had been 22 lakebed excavations, with volunteers of all ages from around Japan digging alongside the researchers. Bone knives and stone scrapers turned up in the same layers as the elephant bones, and the Nojiriko Naumann Elephant Museum on the shore reads the Tategahana site as a place where people hunted and butchered elephants about 40,000 years ago. Inside are life-size models of a Naumann elephant and a giant deer, plus a corner where you can handle fossils. The lake itself is 38.5 m deep and about 4.45 square kilometres, formed some 70,000 years ago when part of Mount Kurohime collapsed and dammed a valley. The busy west shore is flat and shallow; the east side is lava headlands and holiday villas. From May to October there are kayak, SUP and sailing lessons and a sightseeing boat of about 40 minutes that stops at Benten-jima for Uga Shrine. Without a car it is awkward: Kurohime Station is a 10-minute taxi ride away.