Fascinating Fact Fridays

  It was a peaceful morning on the remote Pacific island of Waponi, and Maleko, a respected island elder, was tending to his taro garden under a clear, sunlit sky. The familiar sounds of birdsong and waves gently crashing upon the shore filled the air. Then suddenly, the tranquility was shattered. A deafening roar filled the heavens, and Maleko looked up in astonishment as an enormous metal bird descended from the sky, blotting out the sun and shaking the very ground beneath his feet. This "metal bird" was, of course, an airplane, and its mysterious arrival was due to the tumultuous events of World War II. The island had inadvertently become a strategic location, attracting both American and Japanese military forces. Soldiers from these distant lands arrived, bringing vast amounts of cargo—food in shiny tins, clothing softer than anything the islanders had known, miraculous medicines, and strange metal boxes that emitted voices from far away. For weeks and months, airplanes c...

Every December, Christmas joy sweeps the streets of Tokyo. Storefronts glow with twinkling lights, trees are decorated, and standing proudly among it all, draped in red and white, is a jolly old man preparing his Christmas bounty. But this isn’t Santa Claus. Oh no—this is Colonel Sanders. And in Japan, he is Christmas. In a delightful twist of holiday fate, Japan’s jolliest Christmas tradition doesn’t involve mistletoe or chestnuts roasting on an open fire—it involves a party bucket of fried chicken, a side of coleslaw, and a Santa suit-wearing statue of the Colonel standing proudly outside every Kentucky Fried Chicken. This phenomenon began in the 1970s, when Takeshi Okawara—the enterprising manager of the very first KFC in Japan—overheard foreigners longing for a traditional Christmas turkey. Sensing an opportunity, he whipped up a substitute feast and called it the “party barrel.” He then launched a national ad campaign with a catchy slogan: Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii — “Kentucky f...