Fun fact - The Kuma river - which Kuma is named after - is in Kumamoto prefecture. There are no bears in Kumamoto.
The Kuma river doesn't use the kanji for bear (it's 球磨川, not 熊川), and while Kumamoto does, that stems from people being unfamiliar with the original kanji for the 'Kuma' part - which is, in fact, was same kuma as in Abukuma! (隈本 became 熊本).
Because of this, a lot of people assume that there are bears in Kumamoto - while there ae have wild boars, and there are certainly bears in the zoo and whatnot, there are not resident species of bears there.
