Hello! I (26F) live alone in a small building with only 6 apartments and 2 floors. I’ve been here for around 9 months now and my upstairs neighbor have been annoying and scaring me at the same time. It all started around 5 or 6 months ago when I had 3 friends over to make sushi together and we were talking and laughing and the neighbor stated making these terribly loud, violent bangs on the floor, directly on out heads. At first we thought he was dropping stuff, and then like 30 minutes later he came to bang on my door and yell on my face to be quiet. I felt really guilty, apologized a lot and asked my friends to leave, but after that I realized. It was 9pm. We were sitting on the floor rolling rice in nori and looking up apartments on the pc. Not drinking alcohol, not yelling or walking around, they were there for around 2 hours. I was upset because it didn’t feel like I was really being such a bother enough for him to come yell at me as if I was doing a full party at 2 am.
After that, he did this banging on him floor/my ceiling on really random moments. Once when I was calling my mother at 7pm to tell her happy birthday, then once at 8pm because I had 2 friend over to play animal crossing, then once recently at 6pm when a friend came to help me put together a nitori hanger.
Funny enough, he never ever complain when I bring my boyfriend or mother over even if we stay up late or build other furniture that certainly were much noisier, nor when I’m listening to music or watching something on the pc. So it feels like it’s not really that I’m making noise, but more like he’s already annoyed at something else and if I make any little sound that day he will complain.
I was really guilty at first and prohibited my friends from coming since I didn’t want to bother him and I’m really scared that he could call the police and that could get me in trouble with immigration in some way (I’m a student who has to renew her visa on the middle of this year), or that he would get violent with me since he bangs REALLY agressively on the floor and it scares me.
With time I started to notice he didn’t seem bothered by the japanese couple next to him that vacuum cleaner at midnight and argue loudly at night once in a while, or the girl that works during the night and does her laundry at 3 am. he himself is very noisy and thumps a lot on my ceiling, but honestly it doesnt bother me. I just want to be able to live my life too. Espcially since all the times he complained it was before 10pm, I wasn’t being noisy for multiple hours, and it was not extreme noise like banging and yelling, just laughing and chattering.
So I’m really lost if he is being overly strict and I should just live my life or confront him if he comes to yell at me again because I’m not doing anything wrong, or if I should be more careful because this would be something that can bite me back if he decides to do something like call the police. My friends really want to confront this guy if he comes threaten me again since they all say he is being completely nonsensical since I’m really quiet and he’s only doing this because I’m a much younger and smaller woman living by myself, but I really don’t want to get in trouble.