Thank you for your prompt responses!

I understood now that the data is as intended, and the comment does help to understand the reason. I was first alerted about this because a reverse lookup of the Asia/Tokyo timezone until now returned only Japan, but started evaluating as Australia.

It definitely is an interesting fact that Asia/Tokyo is traditionally observed in a country other than Japan.

Best regards,

Patrick

On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 8:53 AM Paul Eggert wrote:

> The Asia/Tokyo time zone seems to have been linked with Australia, probably
> by mistake.
> Please see this related difference from the zone1970.tab file, observed
> when comparing 2024b and 2025a.
>
> 186c186
> < JP +353916+1394441 Asia/Tokyo
> ---
>> JP,AU +353916+1394441 Asia/Tokyo Eyre Bird Observatory
>
> The Eyre Bird Observatory should probably be linked with an Australian time
> zone instead of Asia/Tokyo.

Actually that line should be OK, as the Eyre Bird Observatory region
(unlike the rest of Australia) has observed Tokyo time since 1970.

The comments at the start of zone1970.tab say this about the "Eyre Bird
Observatory" in column 4:

# Comments; present if and only if countries have multiple timezones,
# and useful only for those countries. For example, the comments
# for the row with countries CH,DE,LI and name Europe/Zurich
# are useful only for DE, since CH and LI have no other timezones.

"Eyre Bird Observatory" is useful only for AU, since JP has no other
timezones; so this is another example of that column-4 idea.