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OddlyTrueJP

@oddlytruejp.bsky.social
58 followers 1 following 3K posts

Weird, but true. Bite-size facts from around the world—fun, curious, occasionally useful. New shorts daily. See you in Japan(^o^) — Stories & Travel japanheritage.jp

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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 14h
💎 Diamond is called the "ultimate semiconductor." The hard part? Reliably switching it off. Kanazawa University and AIST ran the first vertical diamond MOSFET that turns off the same way silicon does. Bandgap: ~5.5 eV vs silicon's 1.1. #DiamondSemiconductor #MOSFET #AIST
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 16h
🧸 Japan has the fewest kids ever: 13.29M, down 45 years straight. Yet its toy market hit a record ¥1.1664T, driven by adults and tourists. Trading cards alone are ~30%. Toys R Us is reportedly handing ~150 stores to Don Quijote's parent. #ToysRUs #DonQuijote #PokemonCards
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 18h
🏛️ Japan's long-term bond yield just topped 3%, a 30-year high. Now the Finance Ministry is studying on-chain JGBs. But bonds and cash already swap at once. What blockchain could fix: the 1-day T+1 gap and night hours. #JGB #Tokenization #OnChainSettlement
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20h
🕷️ Spider-Man is coming to Shibuya! MARVEL | KADOKAWA revealed a Shibuya-set Spider-Man manga, the same day Shueisha's 14 Marvel volumes left e-book stores. Japan's Spidey history goes way back: in 1978 he had a giant robot. #SpiderMan #Marvel #KADOKAWA #Leopardon
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22h
🐕 Japanese police dogs are famous for picking a suspect's scent from a lineup of cloths. Tochigi police just dropped that test, the first change since 1967. It had zero call-outs in 2025, while searches for missing people nearly doubled, 61 → 120. #PoliceDogs #Tochigi #K9
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
🔌 Instead of sending power to an AI data center, Japan's biggest power producer is bringing the data center to the power plant. JERA, Dell and RHAELM plan a 400 MW AI data center at JERA's Chiba gas plant: $15B+, no public grid. #JERA #AIDataCenter #Dell #Chiba
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
🧪 The yellow sulfur crusted on volcanic vents? Your cells make it too. A Tohoku University-led team reports in Science: mouse and human cells make S8 and store it in fat. Why so late? It won't dissolve in water and breaks apart when measured. #Sulfur #TohokuUniversity
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
🏁 Bridgestone left F1 in 2010, then lost a 2023 bid to return. From December, it's back in an FIA world championship, supplying tyres for every Formula E car. The catch? Its "65% recycled & renewable" claim has a footnote. #Bridgestone #FormulaE #Gen4 #Tyres
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
📉 Motor giant Nidec blamed its own "conventional management" for a ¥632.1B writedown: expansion in every direction, short-term targets. Since founder Shigenobu Nagamori handed over in 2018, none of his 4 successors has lasted 3 years. #Nidec #Nagamori #CorporateGovernance
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🍜 A Ukrainian soldier rated Japanese snacks from his trench, out of 10. Jagarico: 9/10. His favorite cup noodle won him over with a soy sauce packet. His last review: "I didn't eat because I was hungry. I ate because I wanted joy." #Ukraine #JapaneseSnacks #Zine #CupNoodles
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🌾 Oriental storks went extinct in the wild in Japan in 1971. Now 728 fly free. Only 49 were released by people. Most of the rest hatched in the wild, raised on frogs and fish from rice paddies farmed with few or no pesticides. #OrientalStork #Toyooka #Kounotori #Conservation
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🛰️ Japan made the world's first two-way laser link between satellites in 2005. Starlink scaled it up. Now NEC plans hundreds of laser-linked satellites. Not to catch Starlink's ~11,000, but so Japan won't have to rely on it. #NEC #Starlink #SatelliteConstellation #LaserComms
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
🛢️ Japan imports almost all its oil. Yet in Niigata, old wells from what was once its top oil field still leak. The ward budgeted ¥120M to plug them. The catch: nobody knows where the pipes are. Some were cut 120m underground. #Niigata #OrphanedWells #OilLeak #NiitsuOilField
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
🌊 "Super El Niño could cost $5.6 trillion!" said a Japanese headline. But that's a 1997–98 estimate of income lost through 2003. For the same event, the World Bank said $45 billion. 100x smaller. Same El Niño. Very different math. #ElNino #ClimateEconomics #WorldBank
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
📉 Since 2013, Japan tried to push prices UP on purpose. Now its economy minister, a longtime reflationist, says that era is over. The numbers got there first: BOJ rate at 1.25%, a 31-year high. 10-year JGB yield hit 3.115%, highest since 1996. #Abenomics #BankOfJapan #JGB
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🍅 Japan's gene-edited GABA tomato is called the "world's first gene-edited food." It isn't. A US soybean oil beat it in 2019. What it can claim: the first CRISPR food on general sale. That narrower "first" explains why Japan moved early. #CRISPR #GeneEditing #GABATomato
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
⚖️ In Japan you can vote at 18. But at 17, sharing a campaign post online risks up to a year in prison. On Sept 25, a Tokyo court ruled that ban unconstitutional for the first time. The 4 young plaintiffs still lost. #ElectionLaw #YouthRights #VotingAge #TokyoDistrictCourt
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🥚 Two eggs outweigh this racing shoe. Mizuno's Hyperwarp 96 weighs ~96g, yet packs a thick foam sole and a full-length carbon plate. Only 696 pairs, ¥88,000 (~$557). The gap to its Adidas rival? About 1 gram. #Mizuno #Hyperwarp96 #SuperShoes #RunningShoes #Marathon
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🐸 Brown bears on Hokkaido, black bears on Honshu. Since 1883 the Tsugaru Strait has been Japan's wildlife divide: Blakiston's Line. Only one amphibian is native to both sides: a tree frog that crossed the sea 1–2.5M years ago. #BlakistonsLine #TreeFrog #Hokkaido #Genetics
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🔴 Webb keeps finding tiny "little red dots" in the early universe. Nobody agrees on what they are. Simulations on Japan's ATERUI III supercomputer show a newborn black hole could look exactly like one. Case closed? Not quite. #LittleRedDots #JWST #ATERUI #BlackHole
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🔬 For 25 years, physicists had fully identified just ONE nucleus holding two Lambda particles. Now RIKEN has a second. AI scanned microscope images of film with ~1M particle tracks per cm². AI narrowed it down; humans made the call. #RIKEN #NuclearPhysics #Hypernucleus #JPARC
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
👻 The "invisibility cloak" started with a manga. A Tokyo grad student got Ghost in the Shell as required reading. He later helped build real optical camouflage with reflector material, a half mirror and a projector. #GhostInTheShell #OpticalCamouflage #MasahikoInami
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🌊 1 petabit per second across the Atlantic. Meta's Petal cable will link the US and France, built with Japan's NEC and Sumitomo Electric. The trick? Two light paths per glass strand. Enough for 75% of humanity to stream music at once. #SubseaCable #NEC #SumitomoElectric
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
📱 Your phone screen likely glows thanks to iridium, a rare metal. Kyushu University's Chihaya Adachi helped put it there in 2001. Then he found a way to take it out: TADF, OLEDs with no metal at all. Now: 2026 Clarivate Citation Laureate. 🏅 #OLED #TADF #KyushuUniversity
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🚗 Japan says ¥8.2T in self-driving investment brings ¥187.3T in economic effects. Roughly 23x. But the math also counts the extra sales Japan hopes to win, not just the investment. So where does 23x really come from? #SelfDriving #AutonomousVehicles #JapanGrowthStrategy
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🦊 A wild fox in Japan dropped a live mole on a family's lawn, sat with it for an hour, and left without eating it. Japan's internet instantly thought of Gon, the folktale fox who leaves gifts. A mole expert's theory? Sun-drying. 🌞 #Gongitsune #Yonago #Tottori #Fox
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
✨ Tokyo's fireflies are flashing in the wrong dialect. Eastern Genji fireflies blink every 4 seconds, western ones every 2. That's how they find a mate. Over 70% of Tokyo populations now carry western lineages — from well-meaning releases. #GenjiFirefly #hotaru #fireflies
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🐟 10,400 fish died in a Hiroshima reservoir. Nobody knows who put them there. Wakasagi are northern cold-water smelt. The water hit 30°C; they tolerate 26°C. Releasing them isn't illegal: Japan's invasive species law covers only imports. #wakasagi #InvasiveSpecies #Hiroshima
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
♨️ Sento are the last thing in Japan whose price a prefecture still caps by law — a 1946 ordinance. 17,999 bathhouses in 1968. 1,493 today. Tokyo's cap was ¥550; its own study said ¥574 was needed. Yamagata has zero sento left, and still keeps a cap. #sento #ofuro #Yamagata
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🍱 Japan gave the world "mottainai" — then refuses to box your leftovers. Only 10.8% of diners took food home last year. 6.7% were refused. Ordering a meal is a contract to eat it there. Get sick later and the restaurant wears it. #mottainai #mottECO #FoodWaste #doggybag
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🧺 A quantum physics term borrowed from a bamboo basket weaver. "Kagome" = kago (basket) + me (holes). NIMS built one from propeller-shaped molecules that self-assemble, with some electrons massless and others frozen in place. #KagomeLattice #NIMS #NanoLetters #quantum
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🧬 One wrong letter in one gene. That's the whole disease. HMSN-P, found in Okinawan families in 1983, comes down to a single DNA typo. A Japan-led team just corrected it in mice and patient cells — without cutting the DNA. #BaseEditing #HMSNP #Okinawa #CiRA #GeneEditing
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🚉 Japan's automatic ticket gates turn 60. The first opened at Kitasenri Station, Osaka, in 1967, reading punched passes by light. From spring 2027, Tokyo-area short-distance tickets go QR. The journey data leaves the ticket for a server. #JapaneseTrains #Hankyu #JREast
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🚕 Waymo, GO and Nihon Kotsu want driverless taxis in Tokyo in 2027. Japan made Level 4 legal in 2023, but permits require a fixed route and timetable. Every approval so far is a line on a map: a 2 km cart path, a 700 m shuttle, a busway. #Waymo #Robotaxi #SelfDrivingCars
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
👁️ The retinal implant already in patients uses 100µm pixels. That width caps vision near 20/420. Japanese and Danish researchers built one with 3D carbon electrodes and 40µm pixels. Tested on mouse and pig retina so far. #RetinalImplant #BionicEye #MacularDegeneration
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
🥚 Same feed, same room. Only the housing changed, and the eggs tasted different. A Japanese study of 563 metabolites: cage-free whites carry more umami, caged yolks more creamy fatty acids. Japan still cages 96.6% of its laying hens. #CageFree #AnimalWelfare #FoodScience
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
🏙️ Tokyo's population grew by 75,018 last year. 83% of that growth was foreign residents. Count only Japanese residents and Tokyo is down 3,238 over 5 years. Average age: 46.5 for Japanese residents, 34.8 for foreign residents. #TokyoPopulation #ForeignResidents #Demographics
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
🌧️ Cloud seeding usually means making more rain. Japan wants to move it away from land. The AMAGOI project starts dry-ice trials on snow clouds over Toyama Bay in December. The January test log? Mostly no measurable effect. #CloudSeeding #WeatherModification #Toyama
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
🦕 Dinosaurs nested in the Arctic 70M years ago. Climate models couldn't reproduce that warmth. A Japanese team's fix: tilt Earth's axis ~1° more. With Cretaceous geography, that nudge warms the Arctic several times more than today. #Dinosaurs #Paleoclimate #Cretaceous
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
🥢 In 1971, a Wisconsin village voted 54–14 on letting a Japanese soy sauce maker build a brewery. 55 years later, Kikkoman has opened its third US plant, a $560M bet on Jefferson, Wisconsin. North America now brings in two-thirds of its profit. #Kikkoman #SoySauce #Wisconsin
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
📚 Japan's bookstore profits jumped 4.6x in one year. The catch: all 304 companies combined made just $25.6M, a 0.6% margin. The winners grew by selling Expo 2025 merch, trading cards and university contracts. Not books. #Bookstores #Kinokuniya #Expo2025 #Publishing
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
🧬 A rare killer immune cell is 4% of its type in your 70s. At 100, 9.6%. Past 110, 17.6%. The immune system may not just wind down with age. It rearranges. The study needed 10 volunteers over 110 — findable almost nowhere but Japan. #Supercentenarian #Immunology #Longevity
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
🚕 Netflix is making a Crazy Taxi movie — of a game delisted in 2024. Also greenlit: a Sonic cartoon for preschoolers, and a crime drama from Stranger Than Heaven, a game that doesn't launch until Jan 2027. No one has played the ending. #CrazyTaxi #SEGA #StrangerThanHeaven
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
25 Fields Medalists signed a declaration on AI and math. Nearly every headline got it wrong. They never said AI shouldn't solve problems. The target is AI firms treating math as a scoreboard. Days earlier, a Navier-Stokes claim landed uncredited. #FieldsMedal #NavierStokes
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
🔓 A drinks maker in Toyama was hit by LockBit and paid nothing. Japan's police had built their own decryptor. Free, no case number, used in 100+ countries. 41 companies, ~20 million files restored. Would your country's police do that? #LockBit #Ransomware #Infosec
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
🤧 The 2026 Ig Nobel in Medicine went to a 1977 Japanese paper on how to blow your nose. One nostril at a time. Pinching the clear side pushed airflow through the blocked one up to 5x. 49 years on, one author had died, the other could not be found. #IgNobel #Otolaryngology
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
✊ 30 people playing rock-paper-scissors at once need ~64,201 rounds to leave one winner. Only 4.61 of them decide anything. The rest are ties. Japanese kids fixed this long ago: drop scissors. Rock or paper only. 4.2 rounds. #Janken #RockPaperScissors #Probability
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
🦀 Put two of these crabs in one tank and soon there is one. A Shizuoka lab raised them alone in 300+ boxes for 8 years. Cannibalism was not the hard part. The female can only mate for 1-2 days after she molts. Japan just closed the loop. #MudCrab #SoftShellCrab #LakeHamana
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
🎮 Sony cancelled Kojima's PHYSINT. Xbox picked it up. Western forums called it Sony's blunder. Japanese boards said something else: "Konami was right after all." They questioned the creator, not the publisher. Death Stranding 2 sold 2.5M. #PHYSINT #Kojima #Xbox
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OddlyTrueJP @oddlytruejp.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
⛩️ A temple on Mount Koya will rent you a room for 200,000 yen a night. The day before, the tax office reported the mountain's temples underdeclared over 100 million yen. Same story. 70% of reviews aren't in Japanese. Town population: 2,600. #Koyasan #Shukubo #Overtourism
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