8 Strange Facts About Ninjas.

When you ask people what they know Japan for, one of the most common answers given would be ninjas.

Most of what we know about ninjas isn’t that closely based on fact and is heavily influenced by 20th-century literature, comics, and film.

Something about the mystery surrounding them gets the western world going, but do we really know them?

We’ve dug up some of the strangest facts about ninjas to help enlighten us all about their shrouded past.

The main word used in Japanese historical documents to describe ninjas was Shinobi or Shinobi-no-mono.

The word itself predates ninjas themselves and more or less means to steal away or hide, with mono meaning “person.”

The word ninja comes from how the Japanese kanji characters were read in Chinese and were not used until much later in the 21st century.