I didn't listen to the episode, but I'm a little sceptical. Traditionally, in Japanese there was no word for green, only blue (aoi in Japanese). The forest is

I didn't listen to the episode, but I'm a little sceptical. Traditionally, in Japanese there was no word for green, only blue (aoi in Japanese). The forest is blue, the ocean is blue, the sky is blue, etc. Green (midori) was only added to the language in recent times. Even now the green light on a traffic light is called "aoi" (blue) in Japanese. It's not that Japanese people are not able to distinguish between green and blue, it's that linguistically the colours are broken down differently. If you have a discussion about the colours of the forest, for instance, even now many people will insist that the deep, dark green of pine needles is "aoi" (blue) and that midori (green) is more on the yellow end of green (for example new shoots). So you might be tempted to think that maybe it is the same -- they couldn't see blue and therefore green and blue had the same name. However, the kanji for geen, 緑, has existed for thousands of years and is used in many Japanese words. For example, 緑茶 means "green tea" (as opposed to oolong tea, for instance). So even though the concept of green existed and there was a character for writing it, if you were to ask people 100 years ago (or just ask older people now) what colour "green tea" is, they would say "blue". So I think it is entirely possible that Homer simply didn't use the word "blue" because he categorized colour differently. It's not necessarily the case that he couldn't see it. Well... I guess Homer was blind.... but you get my point ;-)