This small Japanese town has embraced its reputation as an intergalactic UFO hub

Perhaps we’re beating a dead Roswell E.T. over here, but it’s beyond doubt that aliens are totally, obviously, unmistakably here (unlike ghosts, which are either A) fake as hell, or B) also aliens). Tom DeLonge knows it; Obama knows it; the U.S. military knows it… and, apparently, this quaint town in rural Japan knows it, too. Not only that, they’ve got the stones to prove it. Literally speaking, of course.

The news comes via a recent dispatch from VICE centering on Iino, a dying Japanese mountain town in Fukushima that has long dealt with copious amounts of UFO sightings, strange magnetic “energy” fields, and mysteriously placed boulders in and around the area. In fact, Iino is so small that the UFO stuff is really they only thing they’ve got going for them, and you know what? They are totally cool with it, apparently.

“I just feel that the UFOs can help to liven up this town,” local UFO researcher, Ryuichi Aso, tells VICE reporter, Hanako Montgomery. Aso and others are so committed to this sentiment that there’s even a very impressive, retro-futuristic-looking UFO investigation center and museum in Iino. Actually, we should probably clarify: There are a couple alien research centers over there, and we’d like to visit them immediately.

Instead of the many varieties of all-American paranoia we’re used to here, Iino residents sound like they’re really optimistic and happy about being an intergalactic hub.

“We’re here, too, on the other side of the distant sky. I think they just wanted us to know that,” one UFO witness offers at one point, with another later adding, “I’m often asked how someone can get to see a UFO, but the main thing is to be curious about the sky and the wide world. Be aware of it, and try to solve mysteries one by one.”

Send Great Job, Internet tips to [email protected]