Blue vs. Green

According to the Wikipedia in Japanese, in ancient Japan there were only four colors: red, black, white, and blue. The word green (midori) was introduced to Japan more than 1,000 years ago from China, but it was not really classified as a color. Blue (ao) is still used to describe green leaves, green vegetables, green rock, green mountains, and even green rice field.  Blue (ao) is written in at least four different kanji (Chinese characters), and each character means slightly different blue, some bluish, and some greenish.  One character implies the color of face when somebody is sick, one character means greenish sea blue, and one character means real blue (western blue).  They are all pronounced as "ao."  In English when a person is inexperienced, they call him/her "green," but in Japanese we say he/she is blue.

If you check blue in a Japanese dictionary, it includes green, indigo, as its meaning; therefore, blue is still widely used to mean green.

What would you call the traffic light color in the picture on the right?  I see the same color in the States, too.  Do you call this green light or blue light?  Japanese people used to call this blue because blue (ao) still includes green.  I still call this ao (green) if I am not alert.  Parents calls this blue, so will their children.  Even though the Japanese government officially changed the name of this color to green, most people still call it blue.

How about this rice field?    When I call it "bluish rice field" in Japanese, I feel the rice plants are growing vigorously; whereas if I call this green rice field, it tells me only the color green.

I know the differences between blue and green, but I catch myself saying blue when I mean green.  Though I live in the 21st century, I carry 1500 years of my culture on my back, and it is an important part of my life.  When someone asks me where my home is, I almost instantly say "Japan."  Hopefully I can reflect it in my project.  The deep seeded cultural background stays where it is.  When I was in Iowa, everybody in class was asked which (foreign) country they were from; one man proudly said, "I am from Texas."