A court in Tokyo has slapped the father of a young child with an order to pay 360,000 yen to a neighbor who complained that the sound of the child’s footsteps constitute noise pollution.

“The footsteps surpassed tolerable limits,” Yasushi Nakamura, judge at the Tokyo District Court, said in handing down the ruling.

The plaintiff, who lives in Tokyo’s Itabashi-ku, filed a suit against the father demanding 2.4 million yen in damages because of disturbances caused by the loud footsteps of the toddler who moved into the second floor of the same condo complex around April 2004. His wife also suffered from insomnia because of the noise.

The plaintiff had complained about the annoying sound to the father of the 3-to-4-year-old toddler, but the father ignored him. The plaintiff then placed a noise meter in his home and recorded that the footsteps upstairs measured 50 to 65 decibels.

A 60-year old man has earned the dubious honor of becoming the first person ever to be expelled from Tokyo Metropolitan Government public housing since the system was established in 1945.

Tokyo officials said the man was arrested and charged with assault last month because he kicked the door of an apartment belonging to an elderly couple and then threw water over them when they came to his flat and complained.

Apartment administrators had received numerous complaints about the man’s behavior over the past few years, including how he frequently shouted at other residents or demanded that they give him money.

A man in Fukuoka has been arrested for assaulting a neighbor and throwing a chunk of concrete at the victim’s 5-year-old child because the neighbor did not take part in a neighborhood radio exercise event.

The attacker, who is vice president of the neighborhood group who organized the event, hit the victim with a golf club.

Sometimes it seems as if Japanese men have a real problem with expressing their feelings to members of the opposite sex.

Today’s case in point is a 57-year-old man in Shizuoka who was arrested for stalking after he placed condoms under the windshield wipers of a car owned by a woman with whom he wanted to “have a relationship.”

“I wanted to be in a relationship with a woman,” police quoted Matsunaga as saying.

Investigators said that on nine occasions between February and July 2007, [the man] placed 19 unopened condoms under the wipers on the front windscreen of a vehicle of a 31-year-old housewife who lived near his home in Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

The NORKS have warned Japan that it is courting disaster by demanding information about Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents in Japan and carted off to train NORK secret agents.

“Japan is creating a crisis that infringes on the rights of our people,” North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan told reporters at the Beijing Capital International Airport before departing for Pyongyang. “We warned Japan that if it takes one step further, disaster may occur.”

Write another chapter in the ever-growing annals of “Japanese Neighbors from Hell” (previous chapters here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This new chapter takes us to Osaka, where a man was arresting for dumping his urine on his neighbor’s house 169 times. When asked by police why he was so pissed, the man said, “The view from my apartment has been blocked by the neighboring house, which was recently built, and I was irritated.”

[The man] urinated into bottles or pots and poured it on the outer wall of the neighboring house and over one of its outdoor air conditioning units from his apartment on at least 169 occasions between Feb. 17 this year and Monday this week, local police said. On one day, he stained the neighbor’s home nine times.

The man has reportedly been pouring his urine on his neighbor’s property since 2004, but denied doing so until the neighbor was able to catch him doing the dump on videotape.

(12-26) 13:23 PST TOKYO, Japan (AP) –

A Japanese woman charged with inflicting injury on her neighbor by blasting rock music at her house for more than two years was given a 20-month prison term Tuesday, a court official said.

Miyoko Kawahara, 59, was sentenced by the Osaka High Court, revoking an initial ruling that had given her a one-year prison term, court spokesman Takanao Kawasaki said.

Kawahara in Heguri, Nara Prefecture (state) in western Japan, was accused of causing insomnia and headaches to her next-door neighbor by playing loud dance music almost 24 hours a day on a portable stereo she had pointed at her neighbor’s house, 20 feet away.

She was arrested on April 11, 2005. The two women had had a number of disagreements that police did not elaborate on.

“The defendant ignored calls by local authorities and continuously played music at a high volume for some 29 months,” Kyodo News agency quoted presiding Judge Hiroshi Furukawa as telling the court.

In handing down a longer prison term than a local court ruling in April, this year, Furukawa told the court that the defendant “still maintains a hostile attitude toward the victim and it is highly likely she will commit the crime again,” Kyodo said.

Doctors had diagnosed the neighbor as having insomnia and headaches they attributed to the noise. Kawahara started blasting the music in November 2002 and continued until her arrest.

Under Japanese law, those convicted of inflicting injury on another person face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 300,000 yen ($2,520).

More bad neighbor news, this time out of Osaka where police have arrested an 80-year-old woman for throwing urine on her neighbor’s house.

Trouble between the woman and her neighbor started when they argued about the paving of a road nearby and has gone downhill since. In addition to throwing urine on her neighbor’s house the old woman has made it a point to make a lot of noise when cleaning house, and to play the TV at very loud volumes.

Japundit has previously reported on neighbors from hell in Japan here, here, here, and here.

Kazuo Hoshino, the 57-year-old man who we wrote about here when he was known only as Crapman, finally has been arrested for cooking organic waste and his own excrement in his backyard.

According or a report in The Daily Yomiuri (not available on line at this writing), was arrested after he ignored a June 12 deadline set by the Nakano, Tokyo local government to stop his disgusting practice.

Hoshino admitted that he had ignored the local government’s order, but insisted that the garbage did not smell, and that he had not caused any trouble to his neighbors, the police said.

A TV report I saw this morning said that Hoshino’s family has told neighbors they are planning to sell the property and so Hoshino will not be returning to the neighborhood. No doubt the people near Hoshino’s home literally breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this.

For more on another Japanese neighbor from hell, see Japundit’s reports on Miyoko Kawahara here, here, and here.

Remember Miyoko Kawakara? She was the Nara woman who spent 2-1/2 years harassing a neighbor she did not like by playing loud music and by screaming insults at the top of her lungs at all times of the day.

Click here to see a video of this wild woman in action.

The neighbors finally got authorities to act and she was arrested.

A few months later the Nara District Court ordered her to pay 2 million yen in damages to her neighbor.

Now we get word that Kawahara has been sentenced to one year in prison for her actions.

Presiding Judge Tetsuya Okuda said the crime was persistent, insidious and shocking. He also said Miyoko Kawahara, unemployed, had not shown any remorse and could commit similar crimes again.

Kawahara had been charged with inflicting injury on her 65-year-old neighbor, who suffered tension headaches and sleep disorders from the music. Prosecutors had demanded Kawahara be sentenced to three years in prison.

According to the ruling, almost every day from November 2002 to April 2005, Kawahara blasted loud music on a stereo placed near her kitchen door, causing her neighbor across the street to suffer health problems that took a month to recover from.

Problem is that police have had her in custody already for around 250 days since her arrest, which means she will be out in only about 100 days. People in the area have expressed concern about what will happen once Kawahara returns to the neighborhood.

Say. . . Come to think of it, I wonder what ever happened to the feces cooker?

Miyoko Kawahara, the Nara neighbor from hell has been ordered by the Nara District Court to pay 2 million yen in damages to the woman she harassed with loud music and screamed insults for years before the authorities finally stepped in to stop her.

The target of the harassment had demanded three million yen.

If you have yet to see Kawahara in action, click here to view a video of her antics, which was compiled from footage recorded by the woman who lives next door.

There’s big trouble and bad smells a-brewing in a quiet residential district around the Kawashima Shotengai (shop district) in Nakano. Shops are going out of business. Residents are virtually sealed inside their homes. Police and city officials say their hands are tied. All because of an angry old man in his fifties who has a strange habit of cooking his own excrement and organic kitchen waste in his garden (Japanese link).

Since his name has not been made public by the Japanese media, let’s just call him Crapman.

The trouble started about two and a half years ago when Crapman started boiling his own excrement and leftover food in his garden, and dumping the vile brew into a one meter square hole he dug in the ground there. Soon a foul smell started to permeate the neighborhood.

Residents tried various countermeasures to cope with the situation. They spread deodorizing agents near the man’s house, the kept their windows closed no matter what the weather, and housewives quit hanging their laundry outside. Some even had double doors installed on their own homes in an attempt to keep the stench out. But nothing could help the small general store located across the street from Crapman’s house, which was forced to close its doors in March of last year. According to the proprietor, kids said the rank odor made them feel sick, so they quit coming.

Authorities powerless
Finally area residents decided to get the authorities involved. Last month they collected 1,000 signatures and petitioned the police, the government of Tokyo, and Nakano Ward officials to do something. But everywhere they went, they got the same answer — there is no law or ordinance that keeps a person from collecting feces in his backyard!

According to officials, everyone perceives smells differently, and so they are powerless to take any action unless the situation is causing bodily harm to another person. Government representatives also told residents that it is difficult to prove that a shop went out of business due to the smells emanating from Crapman’s garden.

Of course, Tokyo environmental protection laws regulate foul odors, but regulations are mainly aimed as businesses and factories. A Nakano Ward official told the residents that they never imagined a scenario where an individual would collect excrement in their garden when formulating the laws.

Last summer and on August 25th of this year, Nakano Ward officials got permission from the Crapman’s relatives to clean out the pit, but each time the old man simply started another feculent pile as soon as the cleanup was done.

A chronic troublemaker
Crapman has been causing problems for his neighbors for years, and some of them think that his latest antics are intended to get back at the neighborhood. When asked by a TV newsperson about his actions, Crapman said, “I don’t think I’m bothering anyone. I don’t have to explain my actions.”

For now, score it Crapman one, residents, police, and city officials zero.

Photos via news.3yen.com

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Longtime JAPUNDIT readers will recall that this is not the first report we have had about a crazed resident terrorizing the neighborhood as police and city officials sat on their hands. Miyoko Kawahara maintained a virtually constant assault on a neighbor for years before reluctant authorities finally arrested her.

A few months ago, news sites around the world covered the story of Miyoko Kawahara like a blanket. Kawahara was the woman who blasted her 64-year-old neighbor with loud music and insults for 2-1/2 years before the authorities finally stepped in and arrested her.

The neighbor recorded videos of Kawahara screaming (”Move out! Move out! Hurry up and move out!”) at the top of her lungs in time with each strike as she beat the dust out of her futon on the veranda in the morning. The good folks over at conbinibento.com put together a video compilation of Kawahara in action, which you can view by clicking here.

Kawahara made the news again today when she pled “not guilty” to charges of inflicting violence and injury on her neighbor. She admits to playing the music, but claims that the volume was “not unbearable.”

Miyoko Kawahara admitted she aimed her portable stereo toward the home of the 64-year-old neighbor almost 24 hours a day between November 2002 and last April.

But she denied that the music was so loud that it caused physical damage to the neighbor, including headaches and sleepless nights.

According to prosecutors, Kawahara made a hole in her back door to ensure that the racket from her portable stereo reached her neighbor’s house in Heguri, Nara Prefecture.

The two homes are about 6 meters apart.

Judging from what I have seen in the videos, Kawahara’s lawyers really have their work cut out for them.

Trouble started when Kawahara developed a grudge against her neighbor in 1989 after the older woman’s family moved in but did not come over to greet her, as is often the custom in Japan. A light that was reportedly too bright, a car that was parked the wrong way, and other incidents Kawahara perceived as slights added fuel to the feud over the years, apparently driving Kawahara over the edge and firmly into the realm of battydom.