Case file · Sighting
Hakui, 'UFO town', and the sōhachi-bon
Hakui on the Noto peninsula calls itself Japan's UFO town, citing old tales of a flying object shaped like a monk's cymbal (sōhachi-bon); its UFO museum opened in 1996.
1996 CE · 36.89, 136.78 · status: legend
The account
The town's tourism committee promoted the legend during the 1980s UFO boom, and the Cosmo Isle Hakui museum displays real Soviet and NASA space hardware next to UFO photographs.
The sceptical view
Travel writers and critics see the UFO identity as largely modern marketing; no early written source for the cymbal-shaped craft has been widely published.