On the site for the location-based game “Eki Memo!”, which features more than 9,000 stations across Japan, Nishinomiya-Najio was getting attention because it apparently sounds like “Nishinomiya Radio,” so we went to check whether it really does.
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Quoted from Eki Memo! – Station Memories! – Official Site
The page that’s getting attention for sounding just like “Nishinomiya Radio” is here.
Does it really sound like Nishinomiya Radio?
Sometimes it sounds like “Nishinomiya Radio,” and sometimes it doesn’t.
When freelance writer Junichi Sugiyama asked an active train conductor about this in 2012, he was told that conductors speak in “a slightly husky nasal voice with a higher tone” for reasons such as the fact that noise can easily get mixed in and announcements can be hard to distinguish from passengers’ conversations. See Wikipedia
Finally
If you know it’s “Najio,” it might not sound like “Radio,” but if you just happen to hear it, it does feel like it could sound a bit like “Nishinomiya Radio.” There are probably a few other station names outside Nishinomiya that sound like misheard phrases too.
