alafista.com

Having problems dealing with irritating neighbors that just illegally dispose of their trash? Get one of those miniature torii gates that is being used by the Japanese municipal governments to scare wrongdoers away.

Torri gates are those outside Shinto shrines. But these miniatures ones are only 1 meter high and 70 centimeters wide and are being stuck in areas where people had been throwing away trash illegally and are selling like hotcakes among Japanese municipal governments because they’re working so well at scaring wrongdoers away.

Source: Mainichi Japan

Osaka-based New Material reports having sold around 3,000 mini-torii gates since it started offering them in 2003.

“If you’re Japanese, you’re bound to have some sort of fear of the gods. (LOL) We started making them because we thought that if you stick a torii gate up in an area where people have been illegally dumping trash, people are going to think twice before throwing anything else away for fear that the gods may punish them and won’t dump anything,” New Material’s president tells Cyzo.

The mini-torii gates cost 5,000 yen apiece and can be installed simply by pushing them into the ground. They are considerably cheaper than the cost of setting up a security camera, and much more cost-effective than sending patrols out to monitor illegal trash dumping spots.

“We’ve heard from loads of governments that have bought them off us and they all say the illegal dumping has stopped,” the president says.

Man I wonder how they look like. Maybe I should get myself one just for the kick of it.