[cthalupa]

Other people have covered the linguistic aspect enough so no need for me to rehash it, but, the picture in that article is far more blue than any traffic light I've seen in Tokyo in my months there. If I had to describe them with a single word, I'd choose green without hesitation - they just have a bit of a blue tinge to them.

Some example photos from google image that look closest to what I've seen: https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/item/129881591-traffic-l... https://depositphotos.com/editorial/traffic-lights-ginza-dis...

I've not really left Kantō so maybe they are more likely to be more prominently blue elsewhere? Kansai and Hokkaidō google image searches show (mostly) green traffic lights too.

[kouru225]

I’ve seen very blue traffic lights in Japan both in Kyoto and Tokyo. I think the weirdest part of this story that isn’t talked about in the article is that Japan doesn’t seem to have any regulation or consistency defining which shade of blue/green the traffic light should be. Different areas will have different colors and even the same area will have different colors.

[bombcar]

I've seen almost-blue stop lights (go lights?) in the USA, and before everything was LED the color variation between various lights was pretty wide. You could almost always figure it out in context, but absolutely speaking some red lights were almost as yellow as some other light's yellow.

[city41]

The article seems to imply outside of Tokyo with "Elsewhere around the island" and perhaps "Drive around Japan long enough". It would be nice if the article was more specific here, but it's also just a Reader's Digest summary.