hmmmmm…I’m in danger of this looking too much like a sports blog, so I thought today I’d touch upon Japan Mystery #372 – The Case of the 2 Litre PET Bottles.

First, before I delve into the mystery itself, I’ve been living here so long I am accustomed to referring to such bottles as “PET Bottles”, but don’t think that’s what they’re called in Canada – wee scunner, can you confirm? (you’d be my “lifeline” on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, so I may as well put you to the test now…). If they’re not, and you want the lowdown on Polyethylene terephthalate, here’s more than you’ll ever need to know.

On to the mystery…! It’s quite common (I mean, really quite common) to see a line of water-filled PET bottles against a garden wall, or encircling a post on someone’s property, or leading into the front of a house, etc. I have heard that people place them there to stop cats from spraying on said walls, poles, fences, etc. The theory is that “cats are afraid of their reflection, so they will be scared off by the PET bottles”, to which I say: how utterly ridiculous!!

What fascinates me, however, is just how obsessive some property owners become with their little PET bottle installations (I swear, someone needs to do an avant garde PET bottle installation at the next Venice Biennale) – some houses are just SURROUNDED by row upon row of bottles. In this photo, for example, you can see that this particular row is protecting that very industrial looking cement dividing wall (N.B.: the bottles are about 3 ft. off the ground and perched on a very narrow ledge, adjacent to a parking lot) – not sure how much cat traffic that part of the wall gets, but kudos to that very vigilant wall owner for proudly displaying his/her obsessive-compulsive tendencies so openly…!
PS: If anyone can shed any additional light on Japan Mystery #372, get on your soapbox (that’d be the comments section).