The Saga Continues

When my husband and I were living in Tokyo, we once had neighbors who seemed to be banging and crashing around in the apartment above us at all hours of the day and night. At 2:00 am, it sounded as if they were rearranging heavy furniture. After putting up with this for awhile, as we figured the initial situation may have been related to the sounds one makes when moving it, we complained to the landlord. He told them about the problem and it stopped.

In my ongoing saga with my noisy neighbors (born in the early Pleistocene age), the record to date has been:

1. Experience them loudly playing their T.V. after midnight on the evening of the Chinese New Year. Ask them to turn it down and be met with the response, "We're celebrating the Chinese New Year." I had to say that my husband had to work the next morning as it was not a holiday and could they turn it down. They did turn it down.
2. Experience them loudly playing their T.V. on multiple occasions and go down during the day to ask them to turn it down and be met with, "It's not us. Our T.V. is not that loud. It must be someone else." I called the manager and told him there was a noise issue, but the downstairs neighbor said it was not him. 
3.  The manager and we walk around the building at various times of day and night trying to work out who it is. Eventually, it turns out it is the people downstairs and they lied. The manager talks to them and asks them to cool it on the noise front. For a short time, they do.The loud T.V. starts coming back again. The manager asks them again to stop it. They stop for an even shorter time.
4. Increasingly louder T.V. starts to happen again and I get fed up and have the exchange detailed in this post. For those who do want to go back, I asked them to turn it down and they told me essentially that they could do what they wanted and I could go sodomize myself (in attitude and not words). I call the manager and say that this problem needs to be dealt with as, even if we moved, the next tenant would be unlikely to tolerate it either.

Yesterday, the property manager (Hector) came by to reassure me that the situation will be resolved. He told me some things which I did not know, but am not surprised about. First of all, he said they have a surround-sound system. That explains all of the booming and highly "mobile" sound (it seems to move from one side of our apartment to the other). He said the bass is likely set too high and that is causing the vibration. He told me that he would go to their apartment "tomorrow morning" (today) and adjust their bass and find a volume that he felt was reasonable and ask them to stick to it.

That all sounds good in practice, but it's nearly noon here and the "morning" is nearly done and I don't think he visited them. What is more, I think that they are actively avoiding him. Hector told me after my last call that he called them three times and left three messages at a time when we both knew they were home. They did not call him back at all and it is clear that they purposefully avoided talking to him because they knew he was going to ask them to cut it out again. He said that, in the past, the old man has always called him back immediately so this was clearly different behavior.

This morning, I'm pretty sure I saw those ancient creatures leave their apartment. It wouldn't shock me if they knew Hector may come by and left to avoid him or if he knocked on their door and they didn't answer and then took off because they knew he wanted to confront them.

All of this running away and avoiding the property manager in order not to face the inevitable may seem completely irrational and stupid to responsible adults, but it frankly does not surprise me. There are no small number of people, and especially elderly ones, who have behaved in this fashion since I returned to America. They are like children who think that they won't have to face the consequences if they ignore the problem. It's the type of thing that causes kids to skip school despite their awareness of the fact that the teacher will know, the school will require a note from the parent, and that they won't be able to produce said note.

Everything about this old man (and his nearly silent wife, who I believe isn't he major player in this) speaks to his wanting not to take responsibility or deal with this issue. He lies. He lies again. He denies. He avoids. He pretends it's not really happening and that I'm making things up. I have little doubt that he'd "manage" this issue by attempting not to deal with it at all, especially when he knows on some level of his cobwebbed brain that he is in the wrong. He just wants to avoid facing the inevitable - he can't play with his toy the way he wants to and someone is going to take it away from him in at least some capacity.

The situation is complicated by his age and Hector's sense of his fragility. Yesterday, he told me that the man is 85 (no shock) and has suffered a stroke and a few heart attacks (also no surprise as that would relate to the hearing issues). Hector said that the old man was very upset when asked yesterday to cool it on the noise so he wanted to wait until "tomorrow" (again, that's now today) to confront him because he was afraid of initiating some sort of health crisis. Yes, it has been many a person who has had a heart attack because he can't listen to T.V. at sky-high volumes on his surround-sound system. This old man is, essentially, having tantrums because he can't do what he wants and Hector is being tentative because of it. I wish he'd worry more about me getting an ulcer than that enormously old big baby having a tanty and sending himself into a seizure of some sort.

At any rate, I'm writing about this both for catharsis and as a marker on the evolution of this process. I also want to let it be known that, in Japan, where people have consideration for the feelings of others and care about how they get along with others, this would be a done deal after the first complaint. In America, rather than the offending party taking responsibility, he does his best to not change and avoids responsibility at all costs. The response here is entirely selfish and manipulative. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a rare case and it is a reflection of the "individuality" culture in America.