About a month and a half ago, I wrote an entry about the garbage handling in the new building we live in, and noted that the recycled garbage room’s door was strangely locked. Not only do you have to wave your room key over a sensor to get into the room, you have to wave a key over another sensor to get out of the room. This struck me as strange, but I accepted it as okay because before you could get into the room, you had to have a key anyway; I also figured that you could get out of the room via the garage entrance. I figured the double-lock system was to keep people from getting into the building from the garage area via the recycled garbage room.

Well, it turns out that this system is pretty dumb. First of all, the building’s security is kind of a joke. People are constantly entering the building without a key, simply by following in people who open the doors legitimately. When Sachi and I held a housewarming party last month, more than half the guests got past the “locked” front entrance. If someone wants to get in, all they have to do is stand outside pretending to fiddle with their cell phone; when they see someone approach the entrance (from the inside or out), they just pretend to finish text messaging or whatever and then walk to the front door as the other person is passing through. No one questions this. So really, there is no reason to have extra protection elsewhere. The whole “autolock” security thing is weak as tissue paper. Not that I am worried about security; there are cameras and stuff that help prevent crime, each apartment’s door is securely locked, and it’s not like crime is rampant in Japan, anyway.

But the garbage room double-lock is dumb for another reason as well: people can and do get locked into the garbage room. Last week, as I was taking out the trash, I heard a banging on the door to the recycled garbage room. I opened it up, and there was a poor cleaning lady. Somehow she had gotten in, probably as a tenant entered with their key–but when she was finished, she realized that she didn’t have her key! She said that she had been locked in there for fully twenty minutes! Apparently, I was the first person to come along. Sure enough, when I checked, the doors to the garage were locked from the inside, in addition to the door leading to the interior hallway. All the doors were locked from the inside, and there is no intercom in the room.