I’m on the fasttrack to becoming a bitter old man. If you’ve been reading this blog for sometime you know that noise drives me crazy. To the point that I’m contemplating jumping in front of the Bullet train. When I moved to my new house I made a thorough reconnaissance of the neighbourbood in daylight and night. Things looked fine from the noise point of view. My immediate neighbours were old people, no kids. Perfect, although strangely the sound of screaming kids does not irritate me. The only thing suspicious was a kind of old age home nearby but it seemed quiet. Or so I thought.
Recently, they have been letting people use the first floor for various events. It’s become a kind of community centre where citizens can book the space to use as they like. On any weekday night there have been quite a large number of young students using the facility to rehearse a play or dance or some kind of performance. After the community centre closes these young people spill out in front of the building and continuing practicing outside, often shouting in loud voices or dancing and singing until close to midnight.
Well, I’m all for young people doing something creative and the noise they are making is far better than the sound of someone kicking a soccer ball against a fence all night. But, it has been getting out of hand. On thursday nights there’s a group of students practicing a play where a girl finds out his boyfriend is cheating on him and she slaps him around. Since she’s angry about him cheating she’s shouting in a loud voice. I have already remembered the dialogue for this scene and am hearing that obnoxious girl’s voice in dreams. On mondays, there’s some kind of dancing group practicing that involves loud clapping and tonight, wednesdays, there have been a group of guys practicing a manzai (comedy) sketch which unfortunately is not very funny at all. Part of the routine involves three of them trying to move some big object. And guess what they use as the object? Yep, the building itself. They stand outside and practice against the wall of the building. Grunting and yelling as they fail to move the object and try to come up with some other solution. That’s the premise of their sketch.
In a quiet neighbourhood, even a talking voice echos a long distance. Unfortunately, my house is a short distance from them. It’s like someone yelling into my ear. I’ve sent 2 emails to the facility and have gotten very prompt and polite replies saying they will deal with it but I didn’t expect any action.
So tonight, as I was listening to the same 3 guys I finally got sick of it and stuck my head out of the window and yelled at them to shut the f**k up. Or the equivalent in Japanese. The boys were surprised and stunned. They didn’t know where my voice was coming from and one of them even fell down while apologizing profusely in all directions. They fled into the community centre and I never heard from them for the rest of the evening. Obviously, these were good kids and not delinquents setting fire in a park. While I was energized by the power I exerted over these kids I kind of felt bad for ruining their fun time. Do you think I’m a scrooge/party pooper? It’s good thing I’m not a policeman because I’d go nuts with all that power over people telling them to shut up and get the hell out of my way and put that damn cigarette out…well anyway, I got my quiet tonight. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow with the obnoxious screaming girl. I might have to go out there tomorrow and slap them around ;-)
“The boys were surprised and stunned. They didn’t know where my voice was coming from and one of them even fell down while apologizing profusely in all directions. They fled into the community centre and I never heard from them for the rest of the evening.”
This is truly fascinating and just like a few other things I’ve read over months on your blog, makes me realize that Japan probably has little (if anything) to see with the side of the planet I’m living in.
Let’s take the (random) example of my homecountry (France) or Spain where I currently reside and rephrase things a bit :-)
“The boys immediately got angry as hell and started yelling insults in all directions, unable to identify the darn bastard who had dared express his views. After some minutes of yelling death threats and walking around the block looking at every window in hope of identifying the culprit, they would finally give up -temporarily.
From that day on and for a good 2 weeks they would make a point to punish the whole neighborhood, waking up everybody around 1:00-3:00 AM, every single day. On the last night, they would use keys to leave their autograph on a few of the cars parked in the neighborhood.”
Before someone comments on how much I’m exaggerating, let me just say I’ve been experiencing this first-hand two months ago. Wasn’t the one to “complain” to those cheerful youth, but got still punished equally. My poor car too… :-(
I think it was fine to tell them to keep quiet, although a different choice of words would have been better (I found it funny), because their time at the center is up and they need to understand that many people work in the morning.
If they need to practice that often organize it at a better time during the day or on a weekend.
Also, like Clement, I’m surprised one of the kids began apologizing everywhere. Here in the US when I was in a high school class, a group of students were outside being very loud. My teacher went outside and asked them to settle down … their response was “shut up you old b****” and they ran. I felt bad because the teacher was nice but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
Hmmm…now that you mention it, it is kind of dangerous to be yelling at them like that. There may be reprecussions in the future. I better watch my back later on.
I posted awhile back about neighbors who were carrying on on their balcony after midnight who we had to tell to shut up (though my husband did it politely). I think that the way Japan views getting along, particularly with one’s neighbors, would make it very unlikely that you’d ever get a retaliatory strike from telling them to shut the hell up. In the west, obviously, this is quite a different story.
Personally, my only problem with doing what you did is how it affects you personally. If you feel bad in the long run because you acted negatively, then it’s a cause for concern as you want to be a certain type of person and allowing them to push your buttons may not be best for you spiritually.
I don’t feel the least bit bad for the boys though as people who act in a manner which shows they are oblivious to the world around them will rarely respond to anything less than a splash of cold water in the face. They have thick hides and insensitive ears. Being nice to them about it would likely result in limit-testing that’d drive you crazy again. What you did is more likely to increase their general awareness of how they’re behaving outside may affect others.
Get Danny to show up in his Stormtrooper costume some night. The Empire knows how to deal with petulant youth!
Thou - they might all start dancing with him!
I would have reacted in the same way and felt like a scrooge. Always hate when I lose my temper…
Young people need to have their fun. It’s what being young is all about. However, they also need to learn and remember that lots of us put up with a lot of noise and stress during the work day. We value our peace and quiet when we are at home.
Being young people, I’m sure they forgot about it quickly.
Roy, and what about your neighbours? Were they affected by that noise? Did they do anything to get rid of those nasty rehearsals? Or maybe japanese neighbours are very polite to each other so they can’t shout out in a window something like you did?
Robbie - lol ))
Believe me I know what you’re going through! My new neigbours above and below me are great noise contributors. Not sure if it’s due to the pre-fab building material but sound transmission is just too good. There are relentless barking dogs, a guy who sings and plays on his electric guitar day and night that sometimes I join in to sing and finally small children running above my ceiling when they’ve come to visit their grandparents. What’s more, school boys play and cheer loudly on the ground floor during their ball games in a public court.
I want my peace too.
I’ve been in situations like that before - and on my part I haven’t felt bad afterwards… but I guess the guys you told to shut the f… up were generally good kids and didn’t realise to some extent how loud their voices were.
Following on from what Clement was saying… it is the same in London (where I come from, but now living in Chiba, Japan) - If you tell a group of people to quiet down in person the result would be a terrible confrontation. The best thing you can do is deal with it or call the police.
I have yet to come across a situation like this in Japan, but one thing I do find annoying is people who leave their dogs outside and when the dogs bark their heads off, they do nothing to shut them up. And how I love when they sing in great harmony at 5pm everyday as the children are prompted to go home safely over a loud speaker followed by a song.
I used to live near a juku that had classes until about 10 o’clock, and of course the kids coming out of there would hang out outside afterwards for 20 or 30 minutes screwing around and being junior high kids. So I used to put on my best crotchety old man voice and scream out the window at them to shut up (The advantage of doing an old man voice is that old men mostly mumble anyway, so you can get away with it even if your Japanese isn’t that good.) Anyway, this always scared the crap out of the kids, and they would start apologizing profusely in all directions, while I’m just cracking up laughing. Of course, they were all my students during the day, so I wasn’t exactly scared of them. It was funny sometimes to see them in school the next day, trying to act all tough, when I knew how they had cowered before some unseen grumpy old man the night before.