We are a family of 4, living in UR apartments close to Tachikawa station. We have been living in Tachikawa slightly over a year, with our 2 toddlers. We are a loud family, no excuses. Our kids simply don’t have the measure of how loud they can be when running around the house, hitting the walls with toys, etc … We do our best to calm them and keep them busy, but sometimes is just impossible. Plus, UR apartments and not really built in a solid, soundproof logic, so even when walking in the house it produce eco.
Since couple of weeks ago we have noticed weird crap hanging from the neighbors balcony, living on the upper floor. At the beginning we didn’t really paid attention but then my wife realized they were hanging messages, notes to us, asking to “shut the f***k up”, us and our kids, telling we are stupid people, with stupid kids, etc. Also there was a sort of calendar tracking all the days we have been loud and noisy.
After few days they also start hanging creepy stuff like Japanese Voodoo Dolls (warai-ningyo) plus others Japanese curse-like messages, and some really weird and creepy shit I couldn’t quite understand well.
My Japanese wife got quite scared, since this behavior is not really normal in Japan. Usually people in this situation complains to the rental company, but they instead decided to bully us with this act of psychological violence.
My first reaction, as a European person, was to knok at their door, but my wife was really scared they could have been mentally insane people, and she begged me to avoid direct contact. I still managed to shout, out from my balcony to the man who was hanging more shit, and he totally ran inside the house, scared.
Eventually we decided to bring my wife to our inlaws house together with the kids. Then we contact UR (our rental company) which basically did NOTHING for about a week. Looks like UR doesn’t really care about this kind of disputes, and the best they could do was to send them a notice by mailbox.
We eventually decided to move out, since we don’t trust to live in a place where someone could pick up on us or our kids in the future, also it’s almost impossible to not make any noise during the day, with two toddlers.
Of course, UR doesn’t care and doesn’t take any responsibility about our decision of moving out.
We eventually had to call the police to make our neighbors removing the hanging creepy stuff. Turns out there is a special line you can call to solve this kind of disputes. Two policemen went to my neighbors and made them to take off al that stuff,also explained they cannot do that. Hopefully they’ll refrain from do it again till we move out.
Turns out the neighbors are a old retired couple, who never leave their house. They have been listening at our toddlers “going crazy” for the last few months, and couldnt take more. Still not an excuse for the offenses and curses.
Hopefully this story will help someone in a similar situations. Your rental company doesn’t give a f***k. Actually they’ll likely make the interest of the other part.
Go directly to the police, make them moving first.
9 comments
Picture of the crap they were hanging
https://pasteboard.co/A3ewmoQgjmU6.jpg
So sorry you had to experience that. Hang in there, I’m sure there will be a place that works out for you. The apartment/condo adjacent to ours is open, and I can assure you that there is no amount of sounds or noise that children can make that would disturb us. And, I’m sure that there are others like us.
We moved into a house. It’s a bit pricey and inconvenient in some ways but we can be noisy and with the kid we definitely are. Ironically it was.only four or five years ago that we lived below a noisy kid who would run around at all hours banging on the floor.
What’s also frustrating is that from the crazy neighbors point of view, the hanging crap strategy worked and they got their shitty way.
WTF? They’re total loons.
But when my first kid started walking, I felt so bad for the neighbours, I moved out voluntarily. Been living in detached houses ever since. Just too stressful all round worrying about the amount of noise I am generating. Now I have a few more kids I sometimes feel like even in a detached house we’re all noisy – fortunately most of my neighbours are friendly and also have loud kids.
The weird curses and hanging shit is definitely uncalled for. However as someone who had to deal with a god-awful loud family and their screaming banging stomping banshee children, I also understand their pain.
I’ll get downvoted for this, I don’t care; discipline your kids dude. They’re your responsibility, you chose to pop them out, so now it’s time to adult up and manage that shit. “It’s impossible” is a weak excuse.
Sincerely, every person who lives above/below/beside you noisy-ass families.
That’s a crazy story! I hope the visit from the police sent the message to them and they stop.
Hang your own handmade voodoo dolls of the entire family back at them
Why not just ignore them? Yeah, they’re probably mentally unstable (if they don’t want noise, don’t live in an apartment!), but they have the same rights as you to decorate their balcony as they see fit. Just ignore them….