We all know: Red indicates stop, green means go. But in Japan, even traffic lights mean something else! Blue also means: Go!

If you drive around the island long enough and you’ll likely run into a mythical blue traffic light. You may wonder if the signal is broken, but it's not, actually, those fancy blue traffic lights reflects one of the traditions of early Japanese cultures. The answer is in the Japanese language.

The ancient Japanese language included only four essential colors: black, white, red, and blue. To describe something green, you’d use “ao” —Which means blue— then and over the course of history, a lot of other words to describe colors were added, For example, “Midori” —Which means green—. Even now, some people still consider "Midori" a shade of "Ao", For example, Ao-Ringo —Ringo means Apple— you might think it's a blue apple but it’s actually green, And that brings us to traffic lights.

Everyone kept calling Japan’s traffic lights 'Ao' even though they were green as a gooseberry, even Japan’s official traffic documents, Because of this, In 1973, the government decided to make traffic lights use a blueish shade of green to justifiably continue using 'Ao'

Bonus: Go to Google Translate and translate Ao to English and you will find both '' Green '' and '' Blue ''

Source:

RD

Picture Credit:

1/ SALARYMAN/SHUTTERSTOCK

2/ Japantimes.co.jp

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