EDITORIALS
Hidden Message in the Town Hall's "404 Error Page"! Uncovering the Mystery of the Error Page in Aibetsu Town, Hokkaido, Japan
It is rumored that a certain message is hidden on the website of Aibetsu-cho, Hokkaido, a town known as the home of mushrooms. The message cannot be found on normal pages, and appears only on error screens... What exactly is it about? What are the contents of the message, and what is its purpose?
The message is on the "404 Error" screen of the Aibetsu-cho website
The message is hidden in the "404 Error" screen of the Aibetsu-cho website. Usually, the 404 error page only says "404 Not Found" when the URL is wrong, but here is the page on the Aibetsu-cho homepage.
The "404 Error" screen of the Hokkaido Aibetsu-cho homepage
The page apologizes for the error and talks about the charms of Aibetsu-cho as the home of mushrooms. At the end of the page, there is even a link to the "Furusato Tax Payment" page. It is a page that is not normally displayed, but it is a very elaborate page.
The "403 Error" message also appears on the page.
What is even more surprising is that the message is hidden in the "403 error" screen, which appears when the site cannot be viewed by anyone other than the administrator.
The "403 Error" screen of the Hokkaido Aibetsu-cho homepage
The 403 error screen seems to say, "This page contains confidential information about the production of delicious mushrooms, which is not available to the public. and, as with the 404 error screen, there is an enthusiastic message about Mushroom Village and a link to the hometown tax payment.
Those who inadvertently arrive at this page will be a bit nervous, but also find the humor somewhat heartwarming.
It all started with a foreign website full of originality.
Why was such an elaborate message put into the error page of the town hall's homepage? We asked Mr. Masafumi Takekawa, who was in charge of the project as a member of the Aibetsu-cho Regional Development Cooperation Team at the time of its creation, about his intentions.
This kind of page is almost unheard of in Japan, but I heard that there is a movement overseas to include originality in error pages, including 404s, little by little.
Instead of simply ending with "This page does not exist." I decided to create this page in the hope that it would have the effect of connecting visitors who may have come to the site by mistake, or who may have followed a link from Google.
The Aibetsu-cho humorous error pages that you can't help but read are the result of Takekawa's inspiration and love for Aibetsu.
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