Japanese Salamander Road Trip! Herping From Rice Fields to Mountaintops

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]All right, everyone. We have begun the next leg of our trip. Today, we took the Shinkansen to Kyoto from Tokyo and we are in our rental Nissan de right now.

[00:00:10]It's raining and we got to get out of the city so we can go look for salamanders tonight. Everybody in the party is sick. So, we have reached a turning point in the trip for sure where we've traveled across the country and now we're driving out into some new areas where hopefully we'll be finding some different stuff than we saw in Tokyo. So, we're going to get to our accommodation, check in, and maybe try to go off for salamanders tonight if everybody feels up for it. But if not, we'll be back at it tomorrow. All right, guys. We just pulled up to our accommodation for the next two nights, and it is something else.

[00:00:40]This is a really old, I guess, traditional Japanese home that we're staying in. And our room is way up here.

[00:00:56]This is really neat.

[00:00:59]All right, everyone. It's been a long travel day, but we are finally in the field. And by in the field, I mean walking around the rice patties in the village here where we're staying.

[00:01:08]We're going to try to see some frogs tonight. And if we're lucky, maybe a mimushi or something out in ambush. But it's really chilly and it's raining and we are in a town here. So, not the greatest habitat. But rice patties are awesome. Very, very herpilled ecosystem.

[00:01:21]So, we'll see what we can get into.

[00:01:23]Well, that was fast. Here we have a big tree frog. This looks to be They used to be raka forest. What's the common name for this group of gliding frogs, right?

[00:01:32]Even though this is not really a gliding species, >> it's a big cool tree frog.

[00:01:37]>> Very, very nice. Here's some size reference.

[00:01:42]That's awesome. First herp of the night.

[00:01:44]Cool frog. We only saw one of these on our first trip to Japan. Right here in town, too. Here's a fetaria. I think this is what we're hearing calling right now, but we're going to have to track them down to double check. Um I think rice patty frogs or something like that's the common name.

[00:01:59]>> Correct.

[00:02:00]>> Rice patty frog.

[00:02:01]>> Fijaria kawamurai.

[00:02:02]>> Very nice. We saw these last trip, but not too many of them. Just a handful and it seems like it's their breeding season right now.

[00:02:09]>> All right, we just night shined a bunch of firebellied nudes here in this rice patty. Look at this thing. He's got blue on his tail. I've never seen anything like that.

[00:02:20]Very different looking than the signops we saw on our first trip to Japan, but those were in a very different region of the country. So that might explain it.

[00:02:26]That is so cool.

[00:02:30]Second third salamander species of the trip. Heck yeah. All right, so here we have what I think is going to be a female, which is the one waddling, and a male. This is the one we were looking at earlier.

[00:02:43]>> Look at that.

[00:02:46]>> There's so many of them in here. Let's see if I can spot a few more. Here we go. I think these are the ones we were looking at earlier. The blue tail is so cool, though. That is unreal.

[00:03:01]There's a couple more >> snails in this one pond over here.

[00:03:04]>> There's a bunch right here, too. Lots of snails. There's another new >> also.

[00:03:11]>> There's another new frog species. This is probably the darker form of pilot japonica. I'm guessing they can change colors, too. At least to to an extent like a lot of other highlights. Very cool little frog, though.

[00:03:23]>> Okay, >> here's yet another new frog. This is a ranid, right?

[00:03:26]>> Yeah. No, no, no. Pet. Yeah, except it's a ran.

[00:03:29]>> Okay. Just not ran. Pelopilax spa. Very similar to a leopard frog back home. All right. Here's a land noot. That's the first we've seen of that tonight. I'm going to try to get a photo of him sitting there all photogenic.

[00:03:45]It's crazy that we spent all this trip in pretty much pristine wilderness until now and then we're just walking around the rice patties in town. Active construction site right there. And there's just frogs and nes everywhere.

[00:03:58]That's a really interesting pattern on that guy. Whoa.

[00:04:01]>> Look at that stripe. Look at this dumb little puddle right here.

[00:04:06]Got two nudes in it. Incredible how common these things are here. It's so cool to see these things out of the water like this. Look at that. That is such an awesome noot. What's up, dude?

[00:04:20]That is sick.

[00:04:22]All right, since all three of us are sick and our camera gear is getting wet because it seemingly won't stop raining, we are going to start back for the night. But good little quick amphibian walk tonight. We're going to do something similar tomorrow, but up in the mountains hopefully. Um, but we may see some snakes along the way tomorrow, depending on if it stops raining. I will see you guys then. What you got? Uh, another fage of.

[00:04:45]>> Yeah, nice. All right, this is almost certainly going to be Hilo Japonica.

[00:04:50]Very, very pretty little frog. And I do think this is what we saw earlier. It was just a darker one. This is a very uh not a mature one. They get a a little bit bigger than that. I'm guessing that's a yearling or so. Here's a a big noot in the grass here. And then over here in the puddle, there's a couple more swimming around.

[00:05:10]one there and a real pretty one over there.

[00:05:16]Check this out. Here's a couple more.

[00:05:18]That's probably a big gravid female. And then that's going to be a male, I believe, with the blue tail.

[00:05:34]All right, everyone. and it rained all night and it's probably not going to be a very snaky day today considering how cool and wet it is, but should be perfect for salamanders. So, we're going to head up into the mountains and see if we can find a few more lifer species. My voice might be a little bit weird, but I am definitely on the upswing. I think I hope.

[00:05:57]Oh my goodness.

[00:05:59]That is Hinoius Bulagerie just crossing the trail.

[00:06:07]Oh my goodness. What a salamander. He's so big. And once again, this is another protected species, so we can't handle him or give you any scale, but wow, that is amazing. Roughly the size of an adult spotted salamander.

[00:06:22]And this is presumably one of his breeding wetlands that he's headed towards right now. It is their breeding season and we haven't seen any egg masses yet, which probably means that they haven't bred yet, I'm guessing. All right, everyone. Well, it has been a crazy day. We spent a lot of time driving in the rain, a lot of time hiking in the mist, and uh really we've only seen the one salamander, but we're about to head to a different area and see if we can get into some other species. But this is just a beautiful overlook. You can see the misty rain is returning, so we may see something on the road, but it is very chilly right now. 7° C. I doubt we're going to see any snakes today. And if we do, it might be tonight down lower in elevation.

[00:07:04]This is a salamandery looking little spot.

[00:07:09]After hours and hours of nothing, we just day cruised a beautiful signops.

[00:07:14]Look at that. That's one of the nicest ones so far, doing eastern nude stuff.

[00:07:19]It's not a great look, but I just shined a mamushi.

[00:07:25]That's not a terrible look at him. Just shined a mumushi in a wee pole here. We may be able to get him out, but I think he's a little far back in there. How on earth did this thing get in here? I mean, it's >> Yeah, that's kind of crazy.

[00:07:37]>> It's like a vertical vertical wall. All right. Well, that's a kind of surprising addition to the day considering how cool it is tonight. We were able to get him out with a long stick. He was definitely chilling in there. So, we'll put him back in his hole when we're done. But, we're going to get a few photos. Definitely a nice surprise to end the day if we don't get our salamander target up here tonight.

[00:07:58]But we still haven't even made it to the stream we're going to be hunting. So, we'll continue working our way back up after releasing this guy. Second mushi of the trip. Quite a bit different looking than the first one and in a very different part of the country. Very cool to get on the board with a snake tonight. I'm kind of surprised we didn't see one last night in the rice patties, but I guess it makes sense that this guy was kind of inactive in the pipe. We got our photos. We're going to put him right back in there and continue upstream to where we're going to hopefully see some salamanders.

[00:08:25]You can see he is super chill cuz it's like 50° right now. It's kind of crazy that he was just hanging out in there like that.

[00:08:35]There's a look at that really cool belly they have. This one's actually not as cool as the first one we saw. The belly is a little bit less striking. All right, brother. Here's your hole. Sorry to disturb you. Now he's like, I don't want to go back in there. Now you know where you're at.

[00:08:52]We may even see a couple of these. They seem to be something that's locally abundant. So when you get into them, there's usually quite a few of them, like with copper heads and cotton mouths.

[00:09:04]All right, first and only snake of the day so far. All right, we got some really nice looking salamander habitat by where the mumushi was. So, we're going to poke around here and see if we can find uh another species of an eicodactylus and potentially another species of hinobius as well. Here's our first frog of the night. Nice Japanese common toad. This guy's got a little red on him like the firebelly nudes almost.

[00:09:26]Very nice.

[00:09:28]Why is everything here crazy looking?

[00:09:31]Like look at this worm. It's ridiculous.

[00:09:34]He's literally like every color of the rainbow or just iridescent or something.

[00:09:38]I don't even know what's going on there.

[00:09:42]He's got like a well- definfined top and bottom, too. That's real strange.

[00:09:50]Oh, there's a deer.

[00:09:55]It's kind of crazy we've seen a snake tonight. No salamanders. It's looking like we are not going to meet our target for the night, at least at this spot.

[00:10:03]We're headed back down the mountain.

[00:10:05]Here's another Japanese common toad on the road. It's definitely not too cold for amphibian activity. It just doesn't seem to be that active tonight, I guess.

[00:10:13]We've still yet to see a proper big one.

[00:10:15]All the ones we've been finding have been small.

[00:10:20]Check this snail out. That is so cool.

[00:10:24]He is really neat.

[00:10:29]That's a cool thing about Japan is even if you don't see what you're looking for, you're going to see something cool every five minutes. All right, everybody. Today we are traveling from the main island of Honshu to Shikoku.

[00:10:40]Shikoku is the least traveled to and smallest of Japan's main islands, but it does have a number of endemic salamanders and some very beautiful rural countryside areas that should be quite different from anywhere we've been in Japan so far. Now, to get to Shikoku from Honu, we either have to drive a really long way or take a ferry. So, we've opted to take a ferry. Definitely the more adventurous route to get to the island and something I've never really done before, at least in this capacity.

[00:11:06]It was fairly pricey for all three of us and the rental car to take the ferry, but it was a really cool experience and I'm glad we did it. Fairy ride was crowded. There were lots of people on board, but it was quite peaceful.

[00:11:16]Everyone was really chill and the scenery on deck was beautiful. We got to see some really cool views that you would never see from a car, obviously.

[00:11:23]And after a couple hours of chilling on a boat, we arrived at our destination, Tokushima and Shikoku Island. All right, everyone. when we're finally in habitat.

[00:11:31]Hopefully I don't sound ridiculous because of how congested I am, but we just cruised a Kika frog. First one of the trip. This is not quite a fully grown one, but these guys are really interesting. Super wrinkly and really not that colorful, but definitely an interesting body shape. They're kind of tree frog adjacent. These aren't tree frog, right? Uh I don't quote me.

[00:11:53]>> I want to say they're a raka forid. All right, we'll get this guy out of the road and head up to the creek we're going to be shining tonight.

[00:11:59]We have another round of salamander species that we're in range of now. And hopefully we'll do a little bit better than last time. We'll see. It's our first Rana.

[00:12:10]Some kind of brown frog. Not sure which one we're in range of, but another new frog species for the trip. Nice.

[00:12:19]There's one calling over there. Do you hear him? That is a really pretty brown frog. Probably going to be Tago's brown frog.

[00:12:27]He doesn't look at this dude just cooking along.

[00:12:36]He did he lay down right there?

[00:12:41]>> Oh, he's trying to go in the hole.

[00:12:44]He went in the hole.

[00:12:52]Oh my goodness. Look at that little thing. That is Hinobius Serukiansis.

[00:12:59]So tiny. I don't know if this is an adult or like a a metamorph, but he's like he's about an inch long. All right.

[00:13:06]Well, there's the answer to my question.

[00:13:08]This is a much larger presumably a full grown adult individual of hinobius that Justin just spotted. Beautiful, beautiful salamander and much smaller than the bulaneri we saw earlier in this episode. This is yet another protected species though, so we're just going to observe very briefly and leave the salamander alone. Lot >> more yellow though. We just cruised this beast on our way back down the mountain.

[00:13:31]Look at that.

[00:13:34]Almost fully grown Japanese common toad.

[00:13:37]They definitely get bigger, but that's the biggest one we've seen. The next morning, we woke up to more cold rain, which was really, really not good considering how we were all sick. And after the cold, rainy night hike the night before, I was really starting to feel unwell again. I was losing my voice. I was as congested as I've ever been. But the mountain was calling and we had to go. So, we once again pressed forth up the mountain in search of a couple more different salamander species before having to leave Shikoku and return to Honshu for the final leg of the trip. Well, this is ridiculous.

[00:14:12]We are in the densest fog. It's 2:00 in the afternoon. It's midday right now and it looks like this up here. But there should be salamanders in there. So, let's see what we can get into.

[00:14:37]Oh my goodness.

[00:14:47]All right, here's the tagos brown frog Justin flipped. First harp of the day and a really, really cool torrent right here on the side of the road. It's so dark up here because of the rain that I'm having to use my headlamp during the daytime. Whoa.

[00:15:06]All right, guys. I just flipped one of our main targets of the day. This is Hinoius herosi.

[00:15:12]Very similar looking on the surface to Hinobius Gulerie, but this is actually not a protected species. So, we're going to get a look at this guy and I can show you just how big he is. I mean, this thing is massive. Look at that solid black. Really, really cool looking animal. Look at that tail.

[00:15:32]Oh my goodness, that is so sick.

[00:15:36]What a beast.

[00:15:47]I'm going to go put this guy back under his rock after a few photos. But that is so sick. Really cool to finally find a salamander species that's not protected that we can actually look at up close and get our hands on a little bit so I can show you size reference. Uh the bologonerie was about this size too, maybe a little bit smaller. That is so awesome. It looks like a spotless spotted salamander, but these guys are actually more closely related to uh the Japanese giant salamander than they are any of the salamanders we have here in the US or back in the US. I say here in the US like I'm not here right now. All right, brother. Thank you for existing.

[00:16:24]Here's your big rock.

[00:16:27]Actually, up away from the creek, too.

[00:16:30]Not super wet normally, but it's pouring rain, so it's really wet today.

[00:16:35]So sick.

[00:16:37]All right, it's been a couple hours, but I just flipped yet another new species of Hinobius. This guy is Hino Kohishnis, and he is very active.

[00:16:48]This is another species that is not protected. So, we can actually work with them a little bit. Thankfully so, because he has not stopped moving since I flipped him. That is so sick. Kind of similar to the Sugians as we saw, but a little bit different. A couple mountains over.

[00:17:04]That is awesome.

[00:17:06]All right, here's a look at this guy with a little uh headlamp on him. Whoa.

[00:17:10]He's a very active little dude. Very, very cool looking. Like I said, similar to Serugiansis, but a little bit less vibrant, a little bit less colorful, and about I'm guessing that's going to be a full grown adult. We'll get a couple quick photos and put him back under his rock. He was under one of these rocks right here.

[00:17:31]Look at these guys. I keep thinking they're snakes in the road, but there's just these big purple worms that are like a foot long everywhere.

[00:17:41]All right, everyone. Well, we're all starving to death and the mountain has been unforgivingly cold and rainy today.

[00:17:46]So, we are making our way back down and uh probably going to wrap the day up here, but we're going to we have potential to see things on the way back.

[00:17:53]So, if we see anything of note, I will let you guys know. But otherwise, might just be a two salamander day.

[00:17:59]Beautiful road though. Just a little bit sketchy today with the rain and the mist. This is going to hit different. I am so cold and wet.

[00:18:08]All right, guys. The rice patties are going crazy tonight. We got these crazy looking snails. We got tadpole shrimp.

[00:18:17]Triops of some kind. Look at that.

[00:18:21]>> Oh, there's in here.

[00:18:22]>> Yeah. You see them?

[00:18:23]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:24]>> They're everywhere.

[00:18:25]>> Oh my god. That's cool.

[00:18:26]>> There's so many of them. Where' that hil go?

[00:18:28]>> Right here. Oh.

[00:18:30]>> Oh, here he is. And we got a pretty little hilo japonica here. Look at that guy. That is a really pretty little frog.

[00:18:39]These things are so cool.

[00:18:41]It is crazy how much Oh, hello. It's crazy how much life there is in these rice patties. Look at that. Just zooming around doing his thing. We got a leech right there. Japanese tree frog right there. We got frogs doing it in the road. Look at that. Really pretty pair of hy japonica just doing the dirty right in the middle of the pavement. Not the best spot for it, but really cool to see.

[00:19:09]And literally right past the first pair, there's yet another pair doing it right there on the road.

[00:19:14]>> Oh, here's a cool less, too.

[00:19:15]>> Oh, is that another one?

[00:19:17]>> Yeah.

[00:19:18]>> Everybody's paired up in here. It's cool how variable these guys are. That one's a squirrel tree frog.

[00:19:24]>> Yeah.