About 6 months ago now, I was told that I was being too loud in my apartment by my supervisor. She lives in Sapporo, which is about an hour and a half long drive away, so I had no idea how she could possibly know this. That is when I realized that my neighbour had put up with my noisiness for 2 months, then finally decided to talk to my supervisor about it, who in turn related the tale to the kyoto-sensei, who replied to my supervisor, who talked it over with my neighbour again, and then eventually came to me and said something along the lines of “Jeri, I understand that the customs are different here than back in Canada, but in Japan the walls are thinner, so if you could make a little less noise that would be great.”
I said “yeah, no problem,” and ever since then I’ve been the model tenant. Of course I can’t know this for sure, because no one has come to me recently, but I think that I’ve been more quiet.
What really confuses me, though, is why my neighbour couldn’t just come knock on my door at the first sign of a problem, and mention to me that I was being a little too loud. Then he wouldn’t have had to endure 2 to 3 months of my unchecked loudness before I finally got the memo that it was unacceptable. As of now, 7 months later, I still haven’t really spoken to him, but I hope that everything will work out as planned.
Oh Japan, why you be so indirect?
I don't have any photos for this, so here is some Engrish I saw recently:
