So I’m just sitting around my apartment today, doing odd jobs and getting ready for classes tomorrow, and I start hearing some sort of music being played, the muffled sound-from-the-next-apartment kind of music that anyone who’s lived in an apartment knows all too well. Wanting to know where it was coming from, I did the usual check: I listen at the wall joining my apartment with the next one (I live at the end of the building, for good reason, so there’s only one unit next to mine), I open windows on the other three sides to see if it’s leaking in from there, I even get up on the table to see if that makes any difference, in case it’s coming from above. But nothing seems to localize it. But then I put my ear to the floor, and that most certainly decided it–it was coming from below. And it was very recognizably an electric guitar, someone using an amp in their apartment.

Still, it was muffled and not too loud except when I put my ear to the floor, but after an hour I decided it was loud enough and sporadic enough to be a constant distraction and annoyance if I didn’t say something and get the person to stop. I would certainly not want this kind of thing to go on for a long time, unabated.

Now, you might think that if an electric guitar on an amplifier isn’t that loud, then the person must be showing some restraint. However, you might not know this type of apartment building. In Japan, there are two basic types of construction for multi-unit housing. They are typically referred to as “apartment” style and “mansion” style (Japanese use “mansion” to refer to condominium-style housing, no connection to large, expensive homes).

Apartments are built kind of like cheap hotel rooms; you can hear your neighbors quite well. I’ve had more than my share of these. My last place was like that, and I could hear every cough and snort and other unseemly sounds made by my chain-smoking next-door tenant.

Now, “mansions” are a different matter. They’re built strong, with concrete walls at least a foot thick. Noise is usually not a problem. Let me give you an idea: the couple who live next door to me moved in about 2-3 years ago, and when they did, the woman was pregnant, and gave birth soon thereafter. For all of that time, I did not hear a single baby sound from their place. I might hear the occasional muffled knocking around when they’re moving stuff in their closet, or if they’re nailing something into a wall. But not any sounds that don’t involve hitting the building structure. And I play my TV fairly loud sometimes, even after midnight, and I sometimes ask my neighbors if they can hear anything, and they always report that they never hear a thing.

So that’s why the guitar sound was definitely over the line. If it can be so loud as to come up from the floor below, through all that concrete, then it was way too loud. So I went downstairs, and before ringing the doorbell, listened at the door for a moment. And yes, there it was, seeming to come through the door. So I rang, and after a moment, a nice lady answered. When I asked her if someone was playing an electric guitar in there, she surprised me–she reported that it wasn’t coming from her place, it was coming from the apartment below hers.

Now, that’s noisy. It must have been terrible for this lady. I mean, when I did wall and window noise checks, I couldn’t hear the music very much–only from the floor did it sound loud, which means that it was not traveling through the windows (which seems kind of strange to me), and not really a whole lot through the building structure, either, or else it would’ve been strong from the walls as well, or at least I would think so.

The downstairs lady reported that there was a young teenage boy down there, and when his father was out, he would often play his guitar in a way that she could hear quite loudly. She told me that she had complained many times, but it didn’t really do much. She had not yet reported the noise to the complex management, though I certainly would have, and long ago. The kid must have been playing the guitar even more loudly than usual for it to get all the way up to my unit, two floors above.

So I went down one more flight, rang the doorbell, and sure enough, there was the kid, and sure enough, he was playing the guitar. He said he’d stop, and he did, but I still emphasized to him that if people two floors up could hear it, he should really use headphones instead of speakers for that kind of thing.

So I’m keeping an ear open for this kid now. The lady below me may be more tolerant, but if the kid keeps this up, I won’t have any reservations about reporting it to management.