It’s funny that this happened only 2 or 3 weeks after I made the prompt about relationships with neighbors (all CultureQ topics have no time limit so feel free to answer them any time, next topic will be up by next weekend).
On Monday night I heard a dripping sound and thoight it might be coming from our pet axolotl’s tank. Before I got to his tank to check, the sound got louder and faster and began to sound like rain on the ceiling, except we dont live on the top floor.
It was clearly a leak.
We went up to the room above us and asked them to try their best not to use water til the repairman could come the next day. And so the repairman came and checked our room and theirs and we could not find the cause.
The plumber came to check it out and after checking the room up us to the left, and having worked on the room above us to the right, gave up quickly, saying it didn’t make any sense. He lit a cigarette and said “I’m going home”. Clearly not giving a shit about our predicament.
While the plumber was about as helpful as a hangnail, the repair man felt really bad about him abandoning us so quickly and stayed to answer all our questions and help us come up with a strategy to figure out what was wrong.
Our neighbors on the right who we get along with and see at live music events and nearby restaruants sometimes came to join us. 5 of us sat in a circle and came up with possibilities.
I turned it into a detective theme, listing the suspects which made the repair man laugh out loud. Despite having done this work for at least two decades, he’s never referred to the cause as a “suspect”. I hope he does from now on.
The water came down every night for 3 nights from 8 pm to 11 pm, usually 2 or 3 times. Once it came down in the afternoon. The problem is that each room seemed to have at least one time that they were out when the water came leaking, and no matter what water we turned on, the leak didn’t come when we tested it out.
We had tried every single source of water and yet couldn’t replicate the results on the second or third day with cooperation of the room directly above us and the room to the right.
The older woman in the room to the right entered our room and showed sympathy and a willingness to do whatever she could. The kids upstairs who I often call Godzilla because of their loud footsteps seemed unwilling at first but when they saw how stressed we were they said they use the water a lot and see if we could replicate
My partner and our upstairs neighbors came up with one suspect and the repair man came up with another. I came up with the idea to have everyone make a scheudle of when they used water in their room.
Today i got schedules from the rooms to the left and right and we found a new suspect, the room above us’s washing machine which was being used right before the leak last night, though it wasn’t on each of the times we had a leak so there must be more than one culprit.
This situation has forced us to put all our belongings in the bedroom so we sleep between mountains of clothing and guitar equipment and stationary and yarn and paperwork and books. I’m kind of enjoying it, other than the knowledge that a rat likes to sneak into our ceiling and look for ways into our apartment a few times a week, always failing. Now there are three holes for it to come right in, like the two who came in before we patched up some holes behind the counter.
We sleep on a futon on the floor so the idea is extra nerve racking. There is also the worry of the dirty air of ehstever is hiding in our ceiling, whether its rat poop or rat carcassees or mold or asbestos or whatever Japanese concrete buildings from 1980 might have inside them.
The good news is that our neighbors have gone from strangers and distant acquaintances to friends with a sense of community and cooperation. Our four rooms have exchanged contact info and are getting to know each other, leaving notes and small gifts (crackers and fruit) for each other.
Just a week ago we said empty greetings with cold expressions and now we are asking about each others families and class and work, not in a nosey way, but out of a sense of newfound comraderie.
The kids in the center, right above us, who have been pissing off all three rooms now realize we are just regular decent people and we aren’t out to get them, we just want them to stop shouting and stomping at 4 am. They can play their games whenever they want and live however they’d like and if they need any help they can knock on our doors.
Most people in Tokyo would have left all of this to the repair man and the management company who owuld have called the management companies of the other rooms which would have called the landlords they represent and then the management companies would have to deal with each other and no one would be willing to cooperate and this issue could have gone on for months without progress.
We probably would have felt no choice but to leave but now we feel we are creating a better environment for all of us we feel less on our own in this building. Even the couple we knew before became closer friends because of this.
Maybe we can finally drive out the rats together thanks to this newfound sense of community. I hope we can get the other floors of the building in on it too! And I hope yo god we can find the cause today or tomorrow and fix this damn hole in the wall and dripping water.
——
My music:
Breakdowns happen and buildings with the passage of time happen to them like people, they begin to need repairs. I am glad to know that the neighbours have managed to transform an uncomfortable problem for everyone into a reason for rapprochement. The non-concern for what happens to the other is not unique to Japan, the individualistic society carries that. This anecdote you tell us is a breath of hope in the humanity of people. I hope that together you can find the starting point and it can be solved quickly and without much cost.
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Who thought a nuisance problem will bring neighbors together. It's a heartwarming story.
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