'It's not ours': Government denies knowledge of strange 'UFO' over Japanese city

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It looks like a weather balloon, but the Japan Meteorological Agency denies it's theirs.

An unidentified flying object (UFO) was seen above Aoba Ward in Sendai, Japan, on the morning of June 17, 2020.
An unidentified flying object (UFO) was seen above Aoba Ward in Sendai, Japan, on the morning of June 17, 2020. (Image credit: STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images)

It's not a bird. It's not a plane. And it's not an alien. (It's never an alien, from planet Krypton or otherwise.)

Still, the origin of a strange, balloon-like UFO that appeared in the sky over the city of Sendai, Japan, yesterday (June 17) around 7 a.m. local time, remains a mystery a full day after its sudden arrival. The object looked like a large white, unmanned balloon attached to two crossed propellers, according to news reports. The UFO lingered in the sky, largely motionless, for several hours before drifting over the Pacific Ocean, AFP reported.

While a weather balloon seems like the obvious explanation (they are widely available for purchase), a spokesperson from the Sendai bureau of the Japan Meteorological Agency told AFP that "it's not ours." In his daily press briefing later that day, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga also denied any knowledge of the balloon's origin, according to AFP.

Suga also tried to pop any rumors that the balloony UFO was the dastardly instrument of a foreign government. Earlier on Wednesday, social media speculation about the object ran rampant, giving air to theories that the UFO was distributing North Korean propaganda or even spreading the novel coronavirus. 

The evidence for either of these theories — much like the balloon itself — looks like a big, fat goose egg. For a truly head-scratching UFO mystery, grab a tinfoil hat and take a look at these eerie airborne videos recently declassified by the U.S. government.

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Brandon Specktor
Brandon Specktor
Editor

Brandon is the space / physics editor at Live Science. With more than 20 years of editorial experience, his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and other outlets. He holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. His interests include black holes, asteroids and comets, and the search for extraterrestrial life.