Nagoya airport in Japan runs the Samurai Ninja Project to introduce the history of Central Japan to tourists.

The airport itself is near the birthplace of the Three Feudal Lords — Nobunaga Oda, Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa — “samurai leaders who took the reins of the government during the Age of Warring States” and is home of two ninja villages which produced trained spies during this time.

So the airport’s staff dressed up as ninjas for Ninja Day which is the 22nd day of the 2nd month because the Japanese word for two is ni (transliterated, natch) and ni ni ni is like Ninja. So it’s sort of like how May 4th is Star Wars Day because ‘May the Fourth be with you’.

While 50 staff dressed up as ninjas, 3500 took part in some way.

[A]round 50 people including airline staff and cleaning crews conducted their duties while wearing red or black ninja outfits, airport operator Central Japan International Airport Co. said.

Another 3,500 airport workers, such as those in stores or providing security, wore badges that said they were doing their ninmu (duty). As a play on words, the kanji nin was written with the same character used in ninja instead of the correct one, which means task or responsibility.

The Nagoya airport company’s director says “we want [Nagoya] Chubu airport to be known as Ninja airport.”

United used to fly San Francisco – Nagoya and any time you couldn’t get award seats in a premium cabin to Asia this was a go-to. It would have been special for the flight to have featured ninjas.

(HT: Danielle Vito