When I'd been in Japan a while I lucked into finding incense from a small shop in my college town back in Ohio in a department store in Oita Japan. I was so excited and bought as much as my meager salary would allow.
I came back to my apartment and lit up a stick and was transported felt a bit less homesick. I had grand plans to make a taco salad for dinner with some Doritos I'd found at the import store for just about $10 US (980 yen) and was doing laundry, hanging clothes out to dry on my balcony when the phone rang.
It was my Fudosan (不動産業者). (= Rental Agent) The real estate company which I hadn't seen since I'd signed my lease when I first arrived at least a year before was calling me at home, how odd!
At this point I should explain. The apartment overlooked a recycling company. It was loud, and sometimes smelly (they'd burn tires occasionally) and I'd tried hard to adjust to the early morning sounds of clanking metal being dumped from a truck into a yard, but this was the only apartment the school had arranged for me, and I had no choice in the matter or opportunity to move.
All of the residents had balconies that overlooked this lovely industrial scrap heap (and the burning tires and chemicals) and THIS is where we would hang our laundry. For the most part almost no one has a clothing dryer in Japan, or at least not in the late nineties, early part of the new century. It's normal to wash, then hang (inside or out) your clothes, linens - and most people air out their futon by hanging it out their window or on their balcony rail occasionally, too. Oh, and when airing out the futon, people would beat them vigorously to shake out the ダニ dani (dust mites).
Also, while your laundry was drying if your neighbor was frying fish (a common breakfast item) or cooking anything else pungent--oh well, it all vented out to our common balcony areas. The higher floors probably had a better view OVER the recycling place to the ocean (we were about a 5 minute walk from Beppu Bay) but..any cooking smells that went up, went up to them as well, too.
So, back to the call from the 不動産業者. They reminded me who they were (the fudosan) and we did the surface formality greetings. Then they started asking me very round-about questions:
F: "Are you cooking something?"
Me: Uh..no, doing laundry.
F: "Oh..then do you smell a fire or something? Something burning?"
Me: Uh..no (but now alarmed) but let me look outside to see! Sometimes they burn things across the way!
F: "..."
Me: (Relieved after checking) Oh, good, no - I can only just smell neighbors cooking.
F: "Are you SURE you aren't burning something? Because we have had, um, a complaint about some burning smell - something not right coming from your home."
Me: (still clueless) Wow, no. That's weird. I'm not burning anything. Anyhow, thanks for checking on me - I'm relieved there is no fire!
F: ...
Me: (all the expressions/formalities for ending a phone call in a businesslike manner)
Then the Fudosan, in a resigned tone, also exchanged the end-of-phone call expressions and we end our call.
A little while later, while hanging out my white load I realized it!
My incense!
There was a crabby lady who lived one door down from me. She would never greet me whenever we would happen to cross paths (even though I was greeting her in perfectly fluent Japanese - so she needn't have been worried I didn't speak Japanese).
She once left a nasty note in my mail box saying that my futon was obscuring the morning sunlight for her plants on her balcony and I should be more prompt in bringing in my futon. (Unsigned note of course, but the neighbor to the left had no plants and never was anything but friendly.)
Even though incense (osenko) is commonly burnt in the Butsudan daily (the Butsudan is a sort of family shrine with photos and momentos of deceased relatives commonly found in nearly all Japanese homes)..the incense from the Butsudan was slightly different in scent than my "foreign" incense (osenko).
Also, the neighbor probably assumed there was no way I could have a butsudan, so clearly as a young and wild American I must be smoking something! Perhaps her imagination ran as wild as to think it was illegal drugs. Who knows!
How wrong she was. I would've loved if she'd had the gumption to push a little further rather than to passive aggressively call up and complain to the Fudosan. Had she called the police and they'd found it was osenko (something SHE burned daily, by the way) she would have been completely ashamed. (A big deal in Japan to lose face that way. Especially to a gaijin!)
Oh well. Didn't stop me from burning incense in the future. I just tended to keep my balcony sliding doors on HER side (there were two rooms with floor to ceiling balcony doors) closed when I enjoyed my Wildberry Blend22 or Sandalwood incense.
