Japan’s UFO village, where the magnetic field is said to attract visitors from outer space

UFO stories abound in this area, and there’s plenty to make you think in this under-the-radar town.

Have you ever seen a UFO? While a lot of us probably haven’t, our reporter Masanuki Sunakoma is one of the few who claims to have had a close encounter with one, and he remembers it vividly to this day.

It happened one afternoon in 1996, when he was a high school student. He would always stop at the local convenience store on his way home from school with his baseball club teammates, and on this particular day, he spotted members of the school’s soccer team pointing upwards and making a fuss about something. As Masanuki and his friends approached them, they turned their heads to the sky and saw what was causing the commotion — an object floating above their heads that appeared to be made of two pure white isosceles triangles.

What on Earth was it? It was as if the triangles were attached at one end, and floating in the sky.

▼ Masanuki’s rendering of the incident, complete with “Wow, UFO!” and “Oi, there’s a UFO in  the sky!” exclamations.

After gazing at it for a while, whatever it was seemed like it was stuck firmly to the sky rather than floating in it. The object didn’t move at all. Then suddenly, the triangular object ejected some sort of luminous body from the tip.

Apparently, this was the second time the triangular object had released something, as the soccer team members had earlier been shouting, “It’s falling! It’s falling!” when it happened the first time. Everyone was making such a commotion over the scene that the convenience store manager came out and took a photo of them all to commemorate the moment, but upon looking at the image later, the object couldn’t be seen in the photo.

When they looked up at the sky again the emitted luminescent material seemed to explode in the distance and then the triangular object suddenly disappeared. Mouths agape, the boys couldn’t believe what they’d just seen, and the experience stayed with Masanuki as a memory that made him curious about UFOs ever since.

So in August 2024, almost 30 years after the sighting, Masanuki decided to see if he could find any answers to this childhood mystery by heading out to Japan’s famous “UFO Village“, located in the Iino-cho area of ​​Fukushima City in Fukushima Prefecture.

▼ Since ancient times, this area has been a hotspot for UFO activity, with numerous sightings of luminescent objects leading it to become a sacred place for UFO enthusiasts.

▼ The centrepiece of the village is UFO Fureaikan, a centre that collects UFO-related materials.

UFO Fureaikan is an octagonally shaped facility modelled after a UFO that was said to have landed on a mountainside. Inside the museum, there are UFO models, sighting information, and top secret CIA materials on display. For some reason, on the second floor there’s even a bath with a view, and Masanuki thought it would be wonderful to soak in hot water while searching the sky for UFOs.

▼Scroll through to see some of the photos Masanuki took during his visit.

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According to some of the documents he saw at the facility, UFOs that have been witnessed in the area are not only disc-shaped, but also doughnut-shaped, cigar-shaped, and hat-shaped. There was even a sighting of a UFO that resembled a boomerang.

▼ Masanuki’s rendering of the sighted UFOs.

The reason behind all the UFO sightings in this area is said to be connected to Senganmori Forest. The first theory is that Senganmori’s pyramid-like shape and strong magnetic field creates many points where a compass can’t be fixed, and the entire area serves as an antenna.

Another theory is that the centre of Senganmori is dotted with strangely shaped megaliths from the northwest to the southeast. The arrangement of megaliths and places of worship like shrines are connected by a straight line called a ley line. UFOs are said to be sighted at places with ley lines, such as the pyramids and Stonehenge.

When Masanuki spoke to people at the centre about his UFO sighting and asked them why the object couldn’t be seen in the photo, they explained that it can sometimes be difficult to see and photograph unidentified flying objects.

▼ They likened it to how spokes on a bicycle disappear when they rotate at high speed.

The disappearing spoke theory went some way to explaining things for Masanuki, and before he left the centre he picked up some souvenirs to commemorate his visit.

He purchased a sticker and a couple of keychains, but what really piqued his interest was the Pinkara stone can that he purchased for 550 yen (US$3.83). This can is said to contain a special stone that makes “a metallic clang, ping, and rattling sound” when struck near the summit of Senganmori. Apparently it has a special magnetic force that attracts UFOs.

Felling the coolness of the mysterious rock in his hand, Masanuki wondered if it really had the power to attract UFOs. That’s when he remembered that on the way home, he did spot some mysterious lights in the sky, off to the side of the full moon.

▼ Could any of these have been UFOs?

Masanuki might just be overthinking things and mistaking the reflections from his dashboard for objects in the sky, but then again, who knows? With the Pinkara stone now firmly in his pocket, those UFOs might soon be chasing him down in the near future, so watch this space for more updates!

Site information

UFO Fureaikan/UFO Products Center / UFOふれあい館・UFO物産館
Address: Fukushima-ken, Fukushima-shi, Kamimori, Iino-cho, Aoki, Kote 1-299
福島県福島市飯野町青木字小手神森1-299
Open: 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Closed: Mondays (if Monday is a holiday, Tuesday will be closed)
Website

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Japanese underground idol group GE’LMINATii react to meeting our reporter, their secret songwriter

Sometimes the tables are turned and the idoliser becomes the idolised.

Our reporter Seiji Nakazawa is a man of many talents, and one of those talents is writing and composing songs. It’s more than just a hobby for him, as he’s doing pretty well in the music scene, with underground idol group Ge’lminatii even performing a song written and composed by him.

▼ The members of Ge’lminatii.

While you might think this might make him chummy with the performers, that’s not actually the case, as the business end of things is all taken care of by the group’s management, so performers often have no idea who’s behind the catchy tunes they sing and dance to. So when Seiji  heard that the group would be holding a photo session at a live house called Meguro Rokumeikan in Tokyo, he headed over there to meet them and see how they would react to meeting the man who composed one of their hit songs.

▼ Meguro Rokumeikan

The evening started with the band performing live for their fans, and there were plenty of them in the building.

Seiji wasn’t able to record anything during the performance, but the song he wrote for them has been shared on the band’s official Twitter account, and it’s a pretty catchy tune that gets the crowd going.

▼ The song that Seiji wrote and composed.

【リリース情報】
4週連続リリース第3弾！
本日より「ユグドラシルの歌」が各種サブスクで順次配信開始

▼楽曲リンクhttps://t.co/oS1oJUiCUj

▼楽曲クレジット
作詞、作曲：中澤星児
編曲：エンドウ.

Mixing Engineer：エンドウ.#GELMINATii #ジェルミナティ#新曲 #リリース #連続リリース pic.twitter.com/KLKOMmUmpM

— GE'LMINATii【公式】 (@Gelminatii) August 14, 2024

The photo session that follows a concert performance is a familiar sight in the underground idol world, and the great thing about it is that you can chat with the members of the group while taking photos. On this particular evening the relaxed conversation started with the group addressing the assembled crowd from the stage, where they shared their personal thoughts and thanked their fans.

Then fans were able to have a short one-on-one with the members, with the photo shoot taking about a minute and costing 1,000 yen (US$6.84) for each idol. As Seiji waited in line he rehearsed what he might say to them.

▼ “Hi there, I’m Seiji, your composer.”

By the time Seiji got to them, he was so excited he’s not sure what exactly came out of his mouth, but he was able to let them know he wrote and composed one of their songs, and their reactions were everything he’d hoped for.

Miona: “Wow! That’s amazing!! It’s amazing that you can write such a cool song!”

RiKO: “Wow, thank you very much! I like that song the most. When I heard it, I definitely wanted to sing it myself at the beginning, and I was really happy that I was assigned to sing it!”

MiU: “OMG!! Thank you for the song, it gets everyone pumped up!”

Ritsuki: “I can’t believe you’re here…and wearing a Metallica T-shirt…!”

▼ Seiji’s smile reveals how happy he was to receive such appreciative comments from the idols.

▼ In return, he could only utter a grateful “Thank you, Ge’lminatii!!”

Seiji’s love for the band grew ten times bigger that night, after meeting them in person and forming that songwriter-performer connection. It gave him the energy he needed to continue songwriting…and channelling the spirit of Yngwie Malmsteen into his own international performances.

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Japan’s indie craft cola canned cocktails just might upend the sour/chu-hi world【Taste test】

We crack open the brand-new Iyoshi Sour.

You’ve really got to hand it to Iyoshi Cola. An indie success story in an industry that’s been dominated by gigantic international brands for decades, the Tokyo-based Iyoshi Cola has carved out a niche with its craft beverage-style approach to soft drinks, with founder Takahide Kobayashi applying the same care to his cola that his grandfather did to his herbal remedies.

Iyoshi Cola recently began writing the next chapter of its success story with the launch of Iyoshi Sour. “Sour” here is referring to a class of fizzy cocktails popular in Japan, which are generally a mix of shochu and fruit flavors (sours are also referred to as chu-his). On occasion, though, you can also find cola-based sours, and that’s what Iyoshi Sour is: a canned cocktail with an Iyoshi Cola base.

Iyoshi Sour went on sale on August 27 at Lawson and Natural Lawson convenience stores in Tokyo and Saitama, Kanagawa, Chiba, Tochigi, Gunma, and Ibaraki prefectures. For taste-testing duties, we dispatched our Japanese-language reporter Tasuku Egawa to pick up a can, which he was able to find at his local Lawson in Saitama. Tasuku is a big fan of the regular, non-alcoholic Iyoshi Cola, which he loves for its complex mix of flavors (he also likes Dr. Pepper and root beer, to give you an idea of his baseline tastes), so we figured he was our team member best positioned to evaluate how well it’s made the transition to canned cocktail.

A quick check of the can shows that Iyoshi Sour has an alcohol content of 3.5 percent. This is lower than the 4 to 5 percent typical for mass-market sours, and even farther still from the recently expanding class of high-alcohol sours that are 7, 8, or even 9 percent. However, the expressly stated goal for Iyoshi Sour is to be “something to give you a little happiness in your daily life,” not something to get you drop-dead drunk, so it makes sense they’d go with a milder kick for a more refreshing, relaxing experience.

Taking a look at the ingredient list, there’s a veritable spice bazaar in each can, with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, kola nuts, nutmeg, coriander, and ginseng all part of the recipe, and lemon juice, lime juice, and reishi mushrooms too. Intrigued and eager as Tasuku was to take a sip, though, it wasn’t time to start drinking just yet, because…

…written on the can are instructions to turn it upside down and let it sit that way for 10 seconds before you open it.

We’re guessing this is to mix up all the spices once more so that they’re evenly distributed throughout the can for a consistent flavor between sips.

Once the 10 seconds were up, Tasuku flipped the can right-side-up again and cracked it open. Immediately a tantalizingly complex aroma rose up accompanied by the gentle fizz of the carbonated bubbles popping inside the can. What Tasuku didn’t smell, though, was any of the harsh alcohol olfactory notes that sometimes accompany canned cocktails, especially more cheaply made ones.

Pouring it into a cup, Tasuku could see that Iyoshi Sour is the same bright golden color as Iyoshi Cola.

And now it was time to take a sip, so we’ll turn things over to Tasuku for his impressions.

Usually cola sours have a strong sweetness and sharp alcoholic taste to them that covers up a lot of the cola flavor. In the worst ones, the drink feels sticky and cheap.

But in Iyoshi Sour, the cola flavor is still alive! It might even have a more cohesive cola flavor than the regular Iyoshi Cola. How should I put it… In Iyoshi Cola, there’s a complex mix of spice and herbal flavors. It’s a cola, but so different from other colas that it’s hard to describe. But with the Iyoshi Sour, maybe some of that gets smoothed out by the alcohol, but the alcohol isn’t so strong that it becomes overpowering, so it ends up having a little stronger cola feel. It gives the flavor a really fresh quality, almost like it’s a “freshly-squeezed cola” kind of thing.

Because of the low alcohol content, you don’t have to worry about pacing yourself, and neither the taste nor smell have any harshness. So it’ll probably disappoint people who just want to get hammered, but it’ll also appeal to a wider range of people than all the other heavier cola sours do. But if you slam one or two back, there’s still enough alcohol to get you tipsy pretty quickly, if that’s what you’re after.

Overall, it’s got the potential to be a revolutionary drink in the sour/chu-hi world, one that totally disrupts the existing power balance of the big brands, and I’m honestly amazed at how good it is.

Iyoshi Cola is available in limited quantities, and for a limited time, but if it turns out to be a big seller we might see it expanded to the rest of Japan in the future.

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Bob’s Big Boy is alive and well, and also a cute robot, in Japan【Photos】

Looking for meaty meals and childhood memories at the new-look Big Boy Japan.

Every now and again an overseas chain comes to Japan and becomes a bigger success than it is in its home market. Mister Donut is the most famous example, having just one shop left in the U.S., its country of origin, versus well over a thousand in Japan, but another is Bob’s Big Boy, or just Big Boy, as it’s called in Japan.

Starting out in southern California in the 1930s, Big Boy expanded across America, where it had nearly 250 restaurants in the late ‘80s. Only one of these remains open today, but here in Japan, the Big Boy brand is going strong with 172 branches serving up meaty meals.

Our Japanese-language reporter Takuya Inaba has many fond memories of dining out with his family at their local Big Boy while he was growing up, and when he heard the chain has been renovating and redesigning many of their restaurants as of this summer, he decided to go check out the new look. Until now, Big Boy Japan had always leaned pretty heavily into their “casual American eatery” vibe, but the redesign is going for a bit more of a fashionable feel.

▼ Takuya visited the Big Boy branch in Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture.

That’s all well and good, but Takuya would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a sadness in his heart when he got up to the front door of the restaurant and there was no Big Boy mascot statue there to greet him. As a kid, he’d always loved seeing that smiling cowlicked scamp, and not being greeted by his smiling face put a bit of a damper on his mood.

Thankfully, though, after Takuya got inside…

…he saw that Big Boy remembers its mascot after all!

Even this, though, had a bittersweet feeling. Instead of being at the entrance to welcome customers, he’s now a presence in the background, remembered, but no longer really “here,” Takuya felt.

Still, Takuya was looking forward to all the meat he was about to eat. Like a lot of originally overseas chains in Japan, Big Boy Japan’s menu has been adapted to suit local tastes, and their specialty is hamburger steak. Burgers, meanwhile, are something they usually only offer periodically, but this branch has them as part of their regular menu, so Takuya ordered both a hamburger steak and a hamburger.

Waiting for his food with a mix of emotions, Takuya’s spirits got a boost when he noticed that among the staff…

…was a Big Boy mascot robot waiter!

Unmistakably the classic spokescharacter Big Boy has had for decades, he’s been given an extra dash of modern Japanese graphic design cuteness, and the robot even sported a name tag identifying itself as “Bobby-kun” (ボビーくん).

Now that Takuya’s nostalgia had been satisfied, it was time to do the same for his appetite. He started with an Otawara Hamburger Steak, a 250-gram (8.8-ounce) all-beef hamburger steak for 1,375 yen (US$9.30), which was juicy and immensely delicious.

▼ Hamburger steak served on iron hot plates like this is often brought to the table rare, so that diners can let it cook to the amount they prefer before they start eating.

The 1,045-yen Beef Burger, which uses the same meat as the Otawara Hamburger Steak, was similarly excellent. Yeah, it’s more expensive than a burger at a fast food joint, but the higher quality is worth it, in Takuya’s book, and it’s still more affordable than something comparable would be at a trendy gourmet-aspiring burger bistro.

▼ Surprisingly, Big Boy Japan’s burgers don’t have a third slice of bread in the middle, which was a key characteristic of the “double-decker” Big Boy Burger in America.

Oh, and Takuya also tacked on a Premium Set upgrade to his hamburger steak order for an additional 649 yen, which gets you unlimited refills of soup, salad, rice, and curry.

▼ With curry rice getting more expensive to cook at home, this is a nice perk.

According to Big Boy Japan’s management, they’re not currently planning to renovate each and every branch, but are waiting to gauge customer reactions at the locations that have been redesigned before deciding how to proceed. If they decide to add Bobby-kun robots while still keeping the Big Boy statues at the entrance, though, Takuya will be very happy, and very full from all the repeat trips he’ll make.

Related: Big Boy Japan official website
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