In which I reluctantly....
Mar. 27th, 2009 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkan...have an おばちゃん level up. I moved into the Rectangle last September. Almost every day since then the guy below me has been constantly blasting music. By constantly, I mean "ten to twenty hours a day." And when I say "blasting," I mean "shit on my desk rattling" blasting, "stand on the floor for a foot massage" blasting, "cannot hear what I'm playing on my laptop" blasting.
I'm fine with it during the day--Japanese apartments are notorious for lack of soundproofing. But I'm not cool with it between the hours of 1 to 7 am, because handling grad classes in a foreign language without adequate sleep for five months running? Not fun.
My original plan was to leave a note, but my Japanese friends adamantly counselled against it: the guy is in his apartment around the clock (which is not normal) and when they heard how loud the music was, their immediate response was "Have the management company handle it. He is definitely a bit off."
Okay. But to my American mindset, siccing the management company on a fellow tenant without prior warning is a huge faux pas. Then came the night of EXTREME loudness, which also featured the same song on repeat for four straight hours. So I came down on the floor with the Wrath of GOD. Which, granted, is not exactly writing a note, but I was not about to get dressed at 3 am to go talk to a possibly nutty Japanese guy on my own--especially when my foreigner Japanese might do more harm than good. At any rate, the music stopped...
...for two hours. Then the volume and the song came back. I wouldn't have been surprised if I made his lights flicker with the next set of floor pounding. I could hear his next door neighbors pounding too.
That seemed to solve things for a month.
Until last night, when Japan proved yet again that its logic is not Earth Logic.
The loud music has been back for the past four days, exclusively during the wee hours of the morning.
I got sick enough of it to actually call the management company. I got a polite man who was rather flummoxed to be talking to a foreigner and had a bit of trouble handling my accent (I had a bit of trouble handling Japanese, having been woken up at 1:00 am). Things proceeded relatively well after he'd checked out my identity, until I explained that I wanted them to talk to the guy on my behalf.
"Do you know where the music is coming from?" he asked.
"I believe it's the guy downstairs. I can hear it coming up from the floor." (This is perhaps the understatement of our new century.)
"But can you say with 100% certainty that it the downstairs tenant? If we were to caution the wrong tenant against playing loud music, it would put everyone in a very unfortunate situation."
I averred that I was pretty darn certain, and didn't know how I could be perfectly so. The management company employee then said that unfortunately my lack of certainty put him in a difficult situation, and asked me if I wouldn't mind going downstairs to make certain it was the downstairs neighbor.
Yeah, I can just see how this would play out. There I am, a lone foreign woman in my pjs at 3:30 in the morning, "Um, excuse me. We haven't met, but I'm your upstairs neighbor and I'm dropping by because I've got the management company on hold upstairs--I'm lodging a complaint, see--and I want to make sure I'm bitching about the right asshole. Looks like it's you! Thanks!"
Yeah. Management Guy and I spent the next ten minutes doing the typically Japanese Dancing Around the Issue thing until it became clear that I was not going to go downstairs, sorry. Management Guy promised to have the complaints office contact the guy tomorrow, upon which commenced Act II of Dancing Around the Issue until we resolved that the management company would contact me with the results of their talk with this guy--thus ensuring that they would contact him.
I await the results with bated breath.
That will be all.
I'm fine with it during the day--Japanese apartments are notorious for lack of soundproofing. But I'm not cool with it between the hours of 1 to 7 am, because handling grad classes in a foreign language without adequate sleep for five months running? Not fun.
My original plan was to leave a note, but my Japanese friends adamantly counselled against it: the guy is in his apartment around the clock (which is not normal) and when they heard how loud the music was, their immediate response was "Have the management company handle it. He is definitely a bit off."
Okay. But to my American mindset, siccing the management company on a fellow tenant without prior warning is a huge faux pas. Then came the night of EXTREME loudness, which also featured the same song on repeat for four straight hours. So I came down on the floor with the Wrath of GOD. Which, granted, is not exactly writing a note, but I was not about to get dressed at 3 am to go talk to a possibly nutty Japanese guy on my own--especially when my foreigner Japanese might do more harm than good. At any rate, the music stopped...
...for two hours. Then the volume and the song came back. I wouldn't have been surprised if I made his lights flicker with the next set of floor pounding. I could hear his next door neighbors pounding too.
That seemed to solve things for a month.
Until last night, when Japan proved yet again that its logic is not Earth Logic.
The loud music has been back for the past four days, exclusively during the wee hours of the morning.
I got sick enough of it to actually call the management company. I got a polite man who was rather flummoxed to be talking to a foreigner and had a bit of trouble handling my accent (I had a bit of trouble handling Japanese, having been woken up at 1:00 am). Things proceeded relatively well after he'd checked out my identity, until I explained that I wanted them to talk to the guy on my behalf.
"Do you know where the music is coming from?" he asked.
"I believe it's the guy downstairs. I can hear it coming up from the floor." (This is perhaps the understatement of our new century.)
"But can you say with 100% certainty that it the downstairs tenant? If we were to caution the wrong tenant against playing loud music, it would put everyone in a very unfortunate situation."
I averred that I was pretty darn certain, and didn't know how I could be perfectly so. The management company employee then said that unfortunately my lack of certainty put him in a difficult situation, and asked me if I wouldn't mind going downstairs to make certain it was the downstairs neighbor.
Yeah, I can just see how this would play out. There I am, a lone foreign woman in my pjs at 3:30 in the morning, "Um, excuse me. We haven't met, but I'm your upstairs neighbor and I'm dropping by because I've got the management company on hold upstairs--I'm lodging a complaint, see--and I want to make sure I'm bitching about the right asshole. Looks like it's you! Thanks!"
Yeah. Management Guy and I spent the next ten minutes doing the typically Japanese Dancing Around the Issue thing until it became clear that I was not going to go downstairs, sorry. Management Guy promised to have the complaints office contact the guy tomorrow, upon which commenced Act II of Dancing Around the Issue until we resolved that the management company would contact me with the results of their talk with this guy--thus ensuring that they would contact him.
I await the results with bated breath.
That will be all.