The Sea

Metal Ball Washed Up In Japan

What is it really?

On February 22, 2023, a large iron ball washed up on the shore of Hamamatsu, with the public concerned about espionage or mines are hidden inside of it. In reality, it is most likely just a foreign buoy that got washed up, but the reason why this was treated as such a big deal is because of all that led up to it.

The first thing that sparked so much hysteria around this buoy is the multiple Chinese spy balloons that were shot down over the US in early February. This led to fear of Chinese spies getting info about the US and other countries, like Japan. Without these balloons, this ball would have likely never made it onto the news. In mid-February, North Korea fired some long-range missiles into the sea to the west of Japan. This caused more unrest between the countries in that area and another possibility for espionage. These two combined created the media coverage that happened from this “event”. The bomb squad was even called to make sure that it wasn’t a mine, and it turned out to be hollow with nothing inside.

People were speculating about all sorts of things that the iron ball could be. Some popular theories included a spy balloon, an old mine, and many other wacky theories. The most popular consensus while the government hadn’t specified what it was was that it was just a buoy, and the government was being overdramatic in that they couldn’t identify a buoy. Twitter blew up with people saying that an island country should be able to identify buoys and that the ball was so obviously a buoy.

After all of this drama occurred, the government of that part of Japan declared it a foreign-made buoy, and everyone forgot about that story. No one was spying on Japan, and there were no bombs or mines. This whole situation showed just how badly the media can make a story out of nothing, although it wasn’t unjustified because of the previous events.

https://news.sky.com/story/mysterious-metal-ball-washes-up-on-beach-in-japan-12817038

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/asia/2023/02/24/japan-removes-mystery-metal-ball-washed-up-on-beach-in-hamamatsu/

https://people.com/human-interest/mystery-japan-authorities-perplexed-large-metal-sphere-appears-enshu-beach-hamamatsu/

https://www.businessinsider.com/metal-ball-japan-neil-degrasse-tyson-no-idea-2023-2

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