Someone on X asks what the writing on these beautiful Shinto toriii gates means. A Japanese user, unwilling to kill the magic and inform them these are the names of individual & corporate shrine donors, replies, "There are things best left unknown."

April 08, 2026 - 23:12 UTC

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That said "final market" sounds like a store you'd find in an rpg.
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"Remember the magic sword you farmed for days lol fuck that buy this mythril pearl stabby for 30000000000mon."
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In the first town or hub area of a post-apocalyptic one.
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Apparently the company makes permeable concrete in part for anti flooding.
www.fm-tnbase.co.jp/about/
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Definitely a circumstance where not knowing the language enhances the experience!
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You can do that?
Wouldnt be like... doing a ad in a saint image?
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I mean donor portraits are a thing in western medieval art
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Like Christianity doesn't have a long and detailed history of schlocky consumerism?
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Me, taking pictures with my phone, but too lazy to open Google Translate.
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People who…..pay tribute to Inari.
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⚡️
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What I want to know is how much it costs to enshrine myself into some shrine's torii gates.
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That shrine (Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto) charges about 400,000 yen for a small gate.
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Like a church with names on the bricks on the sidewalk outside, basically
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I mean that just makes then like park benches dedicated to someone basically right
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I mean, some of these seem more like park benches with advertising fliers stuck on, but yeah.
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for sure😂
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Is it weird? No. Is it wrong? I suppose not. Does it feel wrong? Very. Not only do the names hurt the aesthetic (if you can read them, otherwise they do look nice), but it feels sacrilegious to put any name on these.

I guess I'm assuming these are shrines/temple gates though, not just decoration.
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Sometimes words are pretty when you don't know what they mean and this is true of every language.
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Walk a little further and you reach the pre-translated ones
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I was reading down the second name and my blood was running cold pre-emptively because im drowsy from pain meds and thought it was somehow gonna say quandale dingle
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the fun game I played was trying to find the oldest/newest ones. as well as ones that were just funny, like Sapporo Beer & TV Asahi. Managed to find a (stone) Taisho 10 (1921) as well as a brand new Reiwa 6 (2024, when I went)
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Me: So mysterious, what could it possibly say?
🏯: $$$
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the kami are being sponsored huh...
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those torii aren’t gonna build themselves! 😆
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Isn't this how Idaho got it's name ?
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A local fibbing or such I mean.
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I hope Lawson & 7-11 donate to those shrines and put them next to each other.
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Yaki-imo really are divine though.
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There's a video of that guy.
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Technically... they're not even lying.
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Not that weird, really. I mean, we usually do it on bricks here, but putting donor names on things is pretty universal.
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When tourists ask me, I’m blunt with the truth. Stop the fantasy that every Japanese is a samurai and everything they do is a philosophy lesson. Those are company names, not poems (as some tourist suggested)
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Honestly it's a fun thing to learn because it's relatably human. It's not exotic/magical, but people being people and having very human hopes and dreams and priorities is great to see.
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I actually like the real answer better. It shows how much community building goes into these things.
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