Wannabe ninjas plague Japan town after viral mix-up

It's a classic ploy.

Advertise that you need spies.

Turn away all who arrive claiming to be spies.

Only the actual spies who have already infiltrated the group will remain.

Cancel the advertisement for spies and deny ever posting it.

Foreign media filling a space or generating clicks with a grossly exaggerated or indeed completely factless "OMG isn't Japan ZANY!!!" story shocker.

Eyeball licking anyone?

But the viral mix-up could end up... you say it Japanese Doro-n with 2 fingers up.

Wow, I guess there are people out there that can work. So much for the labour shortage.

Great story! Foreigners are obsessed with Ninjas and Samurai. And why not? They are unique to Japanese culture. This story will promote more foreigners to visit Iga which is a fabulous historical city, and all around Japan. Tourist numbers will be soaring even more now!

If Iga is having problems with getting people to come there, they should be hiring whomever put out the false news APF. Seems like they have a longer reach then your own folks!

A good 'fake news' story

I prefer @Yubaru's expression though:

false news

The western city of Iga was featured in a report by American radio station NPR this month about Japan's depopulation and labour shortage problems.

The report said Iga was trying to capitalize on its history as home to ninjas by building a new museum focused on the warriors, but was struggling to hire staff, including ninja performers.

However

"Iga didn't put out information about 'a lack of ninjas in Iga' or the 'annual income of ninjas', that is currently reported by some news sites on the Internet," the city said on its website.

LOL. It looks like NPR didn't bother to substantiate their story before publishing fake news. Equally unsubstantiated copycat stories were then published on the always reliable internet. And people fell for it.