I’ve been living in apartment buildings in central Tokyo for the last 17 years with absolutely zero neighbour problems – until this summer when two chain smokers moved into the building. One lives right next door, the other on a lower floor.
I honestly don’t care at all if people smoke in the building, I’m a live and let live kind of a person. But I do think that there are limits to what’s reasonable or socially acceptable when you’re sharing living space with others, including children and this is EXTREME. Both are chain smokers who work from home so it starts around 8 am and goes on until 3 or 4 am, I kid you not, it does not let up for a minute. One of them seems never to sleep.
The smoke smells really acrid too (like cigars or something, not normal cigarettes) It seeps into my place through the vents, walls, floor it seems. I can even smell it in my refrigerator when I open the door… The hallway smells like a bar. I’ve never in my life experienced anything like it, and I’ve lived with smokers before!
The Japanese family living opposite me complained about it repeatedly to building management and then moved out a month ago because they couldn’t stand it anymore. I’ve also complained numerous times, as has a neighbour on a lower floor, but all they do is say they will remind the perpetrators to “be considerate”, which clearly they’re not doing. They’ve put up signs in the elevator telling tenants that they have to use smoke limiting devices when smoking inside, air purifiers and so forth, and not to use the kitchen fan as it transfers the smoke to other apartments but they take less than zero notice of any of that.
My apartment does not actually have an opening window either, just the balcony door, but leaving it open isn’t practical and doesn’t seem to clear the smell anyway, if anything it makes it worse. I’ve bought an air purifier, candles, incense… nothing gets rid of it, it’s so strong.
I’ve enquired at to why they cannot enforce the use of electronic (smokeless) cigarettes in the building which would largely solve the problem but they never respond to questions about that. It seems a no-brainer to me?
I’ve recently started to approach it from a different angle by telling them that I have an air quality issue in my apartment which they need to address rather than complaining about neighbours smoking. I wish I’d done so from the get go. This shouldn’t be happening in a building with a properly functional ventilation system – which should draw the air out of the building, not redirect it to neighbouring apartments, right? But it does and that means that the air in my apartment is not clean anymore, yet they’re still charging me the same rent for this space… That doesn’t seem right. They have told me there is nothing wrong with the ventilation system… I beg to differ.
I don’t really understand why they can’t evict these people actually. This level of smoking could not be considered normal use of an apartment, and the building rules state clearly that they’re required to use smoke limiting devices in their rooms. They’re not, and that’s inconveniencing other tenants to the extent that they’re moving out of the building. It seems a clear breach of building rules, so…?
I’m slowly going mad here. Moving is not really feasible for a number of reasons and, anyway, I’m not the anti-social dickhead here so I don’t think I should have to. Any advice would be appreciated.