Strange World

A salaryman having a bad day on Strange World

Strange World is the English-language name for Ayashii World (あやしいわーるど), which is an internet-based culture and series of Japanese bulletin boards that began in 1996. On Heyuri, the term is generally used to refer to their Strange World@Heyuri.net bulletin board.

Strange World@Heyuri

Strange World@Heyuri.net was created on March 29th, 2021, and uses a Japanese bulletin board script called KuzuhaScriptPHP+. When the board was initially launched, it was as a part of KolymaNET and the script was only partially translated into English by kuz, but another Heyuri user fully translated it into English on April 19th, 2021.. As of July 11th 2021, it officially became a part of Heyuri.

The board is currently located at [1]. It was originally hosted on https://ayashii.net/, and for a brief period it was simultaneously available at https://img.heyuri.net/sw/. On September 8th, 2024, the ayashii.net domain was replaced with a page explaining in Japanese that the domain was changing to dis.heyuri.net/sw/. The reason for the change was that [Kaguya|kaguya] didn't want to keep paying 12 bux a year for the domain.

Format

Strange World, at its core, is a simple Japanese-style bulletin board. In the main display view, there is a post form at the top of the page, and the 40 most recent posts are shown below in chronological order; from most recent to least recent. There is no thread floating (bumping) or reply threading in the main view, but both can be seen by switching to Tree view and Thread view respectively.

Strange World also features kaomoji (顔文字) buttons that allow users to easily insert kaomoji into their posts, although some are more frequently used than others. This feature is unique to Strange World@Heyuri.net, and is not found on any Japanese Ayashii World bulletin boards.

Culture

Many have noted that Ayashii-style bulletin boards look and feel more like a Web Chat than a bulletin board, and Strange World is no different. The posts made to Strange World are typically short and irreverent, but long-winded discussions and debates are also common. It is generally advised by Heyuri staff and users alike that long posts should be preformatted by inserting line breaks appropriately (usually to keep within 70-80 characters per line), as had been the tradition on Ayashii World, Netnews (Usenet), and other earlier forms of computer communications.

Ayashii-style kaomoji and ASCII Art (AA) (both of which have historically been referred to by Japanese Ayashii World users as emoji (絵文字) and kaomoji) are commonplace, with the vast majority of posts featuring at least one kaomoji. The AA created by Strange World users is designed around the MS Gothic font (a monospaced Japanese font by Microsoft), and it will not appear correct with Western monospaced fonts or proportional Japanese fonts. Some users have difficulty displaying Strange World with the correct font.

Relation with Japanese instances

Strange World@Heyuri has relations with Japanese Strange World instances in the form of mutual links.

While it was alive, the developer (ヶ-san)'s instance あやしいわーるど＠蛭ヶ岳 was linked with Heyuri's instance.

Sometime in early February 2024, Heyuri was linked with あやしいわーるど＠しんかい10000, that got closed in late May 2025, which the administrator later revealed to be because he was busy with exams in 日本語@Heyuri post at August 2025.

In January 2025, Heyuri started to link with あやしいわーるど＠上部構造.

In July 2025, Heyuri linked with あやしいわーるど＠暫定, a Ayashii World instance that has been around on and off since 2002, and where the word "Tsundere" has its root from. It shut down again shortly after due to their free hosting service getting terminated.

Shortly after linking with ＠暫定, it also linked with あやしいわーるど＠能登川, an instance ran by the same administrator, 擬古猫-shi.

In August 2025, AGStar (the administrator of あやしいわーるどII) visited Strange World@Heyuri.

Links

• Strange World@Heyuri.net
• KuzuhaScriptPHP+ (Japanese)
• KuzuhaScriptPHP+ EN (English)