Just Shout

Speaking of Spartan Village, we had a problem with some very noisy neighbors in Apartment J when I lived there (in E).  J was right above my next-door neighbors in D, and we started to enlist other neighbors in our cause to do something about it.  The people from D said they'd talk to the people in C, the man in I would talk to the people in H, and they assigned K to me, since it was directly above me. I had never seen the person from K and, in fact, for a long time thought it was vacant because I never heard anything from that apartment.

I walked down to check the names on the mailboxes and was disappointed to see that the person in K was named Yoshihara.  In my experience, foreign students do not like to get involved in matters of this sort, but I planned to give him or her a try.

A day or two later I looked out my front window at the parking area for our building and saw a Japanese woman washing the windows in her car.  I assumed she was Yoshihara, so I took a deep breath and went forth to try to recruit her.

I said something like, "Hello," and she turned to look at me.  I pointed to her apartment and said very carefully, "Do - you - live - there?"  She just sort of stared at me, but I carried on.  "Those - neighbors," I said a little more loudly, pointing at J, "are - very - noisy."  She nodded her head.  "We - want - all - the - neighbors - to - get - together - to - complain." I used broad gestures, and since she was looking at me so strangely, I followed the universal law that if someone doesn't understand you, you say it louder.  Finally Ms. Yoshihara said somewhat tentatively, "I would be willing to join with you."

Her English was perfect, and I suddenly asked curiously, "Where are you from?" to which she replied, "Hawaii."

So that explains why she stared at me as if I were nuts, because shouting English at a fellow American is kind of a crazy thing to do.