PHP timezone Etc/GTM: how?

Question

PHP

Today I discovered a strange thing. This may be a well-known feature, of course, but
the Japan Timezone is GMT+9
www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?l=Tokyo
According to the documentation www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.others.php
we can do So

new DateTime('now', new DateTimeZone('Etc/GMT+9'));

To get the current time in Japan, but this code actually gives us GMT-9 time (tried to update timezonedb - same thing).
To get GMT+9 you have to write new DateTimeZone('Etc/GMT-9').
Of course, the documentation says:

Please do not use any of the timezones listed here (besides UTC), they only exist for backward compatible reasons.

But it's still pretty weird behavior.

Answer 1

Here's the thing answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2009070714584...

Answer 2

$date = new DateTime('now', new DateTimeZone("Asia/Tokyo"));
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
// 2014-02-21 17:35:52

seems to work correctly