Apple: Steve Jobs isn't a Ninja

For better or worse, the late Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live fame is still the great white ninja foretold by ancient legend (and Hollywood), and not Steve Jobs, the Apple CEO who reportedly said he'll never again return to Japan after airport officials wouldn't let him take ninja throwing starts aboard his private jet.

That's according to a Japanese tabloid called SPA! Magazine, which reported the incident in its latest issue and ended up re-reported by Bloomberg. As the story goes, Jobs was going through a security check at Kansai International Airport when a scan picked up ninja stars he had purchased in Japan while on a family vacation.


Jobs tried to reason with officials that it wouldn't make sense for a person to try and hijack his own plane, and when his reasoning fell on deaf ears, he vowed never to return to Japan, according to the report. But did this really happen?

"Steve did visit Japan this summer for a vacation in Kyoto, but the incidents described at the airport are pure fiction," said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple. "Steve had a great time and hopes to visit Japan again soon."


Maybe, maybe not. According to Bloomberg, a spokesman at Kansai airport did confirm that a passenger using a private jet was stopped at the end of July for carrying "shuriken," which is the Japanese word used to describe ninja throwing stars and other types of concealed handheld blades. But whether or not it was Jobs, the spokesman couldn't say due to privacy policies.