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Another interesting things about Japan's traffic lights: as far as I can tell, they don't detect whether cars are waiting for the light. Last time I visited, I was waiting for ages for the light to change along with other cars, and light wouldn't change early even if there were no cars going through the intersection.
That's just fair - pedestrians aren't detected either
I read somewhere that the original green light was blue but green was easier to see at dawn or at dusk or at you or something so they switched
The number of myths surrounding this phenomenon are quite numourous. * The character for blue is simpler than the character for green, so it's easier for young school children to read safety text, if we call it blue (heard this from several people) * "It IS blue" (not uncommon either) * It used to be blue (apparently contradictred by TFA)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one set of people are waiting unnecessarily, we should make another set do so also?
If the pedestrian was about to get green (or blue) but a car was detected and the pedestrian was forced to wait then that's not fair is it? We already prioritize cars enough, pedestrians usually have to press a button to trigger the crossing so they're always waiting but cars don't get punished for getting to the lights a second after the sequence starts.
Close to where I live there are a couple of funny examples:
In one place the lights are red by default for everyone. Cars are detected from 100m or so away, so they barely need to slow down. Pedestrians need to press a button and usually wait for a while.
At another crossing the lights are green by default for the bigger road. A sideroad has car-detection that is ofter rather quick. Pedestrians and cyclists need to press a button and usually wait for a long time.
Just because you don't sit in a car it's ok to wait that much longer.
English to the rescue. Japanese has the word ブルー ("buruu", blue) from English. That word only means blue, and not green. If you want to be specific that something is blue, excluding green, just use "buruu".
If you're driving in Japan, you're likely to be eaten by a grue light. That said, we actually mix some blue into modern green lights, so that colorblind people can distinguish the two colors. In official CalTrans terminology, the yellow lights are called "amber lights" -- so we have our own weirdness in the U.S.
Amber, the color of traffic lights, waves of grain and... pretty much nothing else. Reminds me of (grammatical) petrels: https://www.kith.org/words/lists/petrels-list/ It's as if when modifiers and nouns sense they are dying in a language, they clutch on to one another for support, and eventually become like a single unit.
SAME issue with the sun. I say it's yellow, they say it's red, and it's not a kanji issue...
$0.02.
In short: Historically, blue and green were the same word. Green is now a separate word, but some green things are called "blue" including green traffic lights. Other "blue" things include apples and vegetables.
> this was most likely due to the fact that red, blue and yellow (赤青黄) are regarded as the three primary colors in Japanese painting. Hence the “blue” traffic lights.
I've lived here in Japan for the past 18 years and I still tend to call them "midori", much to my wife and children's amusement. But, the hue of the lights are actually somewhere between the typical USA green lights and a blue. My wife (and kids) swear that it actually is a BLUE-hue light whereas I still see Green. SAME issue with the sun. I say it's yellow, they say it's red, and it's not a kanji issue... $0.02.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of myths surrounding this phenomenon are quite numourous. * The character for blue is simpler than the character for green, so it's easier for young school children to read safety text, if we call it blue (heard this from several people) * "It IS blue" (not uncommon either) * It used to be blue (apparently contradictred by TFA)
I read somewhere (and a Google search brings up many articles that supports this) that among societies and languages that makes fewer distinctions between colors than the global educated society, blue and green are among the most frequent to remain undistinguished.