I have no idea why you were down voted because that was exactly my reasoning :-) I live in rural Japan. I admit that while I was really angry about someone just coming in and pouring herbicide on my plants, I was more upset that someone didn't just come and talk to me about it. But that's Japanese culture and in retrospect I should have been a bit more outgoing in trying to explain to people what I was doing. In the end I screamed at the gas man from half way across the neighbourhood and he was so embarrassed that he ended up having to transfer to a different part of the city. It probably sounds strange, but I still feel really bad about that. He ruined my 5 year long experiment and killed my plants, but at the time I was yelling at him, it was already done. Hurting him in order to satisfy my anger doesn't actually improve the situation.

Edit: I should point out in my own defence that I didn't actually realize ahead of time that my planters were a nuisance. I weeded out all noxious weeds and my containers were fairly well isolated with about 10 feet of concrete in every direction. Also, there was a parking lot on one side of my lot and an orchard with about a foot of mulch on the ground on the other. The spread of weeds should not have concerned anyone. I honestly think they thought I had just abandoned the planters. It's too bad, but a lesson for me in the importance of optics when you do hair brained experiments at home ;-)