Hi all, I know this is probably not the best place to ask but I am a foreigner now living in Japan and sharing a house with a person from a South Asia country (I would not say where he comes from specifically). And I want to share with you to see if I am too strict and how can I solve this problem.
For me cleanliness is probably a common sense and that respecting shared space is something supposed to be automatic for most people. However, when I am living with him he always makes many excuses either because people from his country does not take cleanliness seriously or he is too busy to take care of it. And I also feel like he wants to take advantage of me.
He is always annoying to me in keeping the shared space in order, such as forget to close the fridge, or put the stove in the wrong direction, or forget to clean the table, or put clothes in the washing machine without using it, and so many more. But he seems to be very good at pretending and talking. Once I was cooking and dropped some sugar in the stove, and I did not clean until I finish cooking, he stood there and clean it in front of me, acting as if he is a very clean person. One thing that I am also impressed is that instead of taking a few seconds to keep the stove in order, he wants to separate them with me because he is always in a hurry and it is annoying to him when I mention about it several times, which I had to accept, but we can see that using one stove is probably consuming more time than if we were able to use both at the same time. And he also smells, whenever he leaves the bathroom or kitchen, these spaces have a very terrible smell, and sometimes he says he does not take a bath for a week or so. But I think it is not so good to say someone smells to them so I pretend to not notice that, but to be honest the smell is very very terrible.
I also used to help him for his daily life, such as walked him to the shops to buy daily items or bicycle or how to use house items. For the first few months I also shared with him some small necessary items for free and asked him to buy them after they are run out as I don't like us to share too many things together or have to calculate the bills. Eventually when they are run out, he asked me again to buy for him because he is "too busy with his many plans", but from my view, he has plenty of time during the day either to sleep or call his friends (this could take a few hours a day as I hear the noise). One thing I was very amazed at the time he told me, I am not sure I understand it completely correct or not, but I asked about his relationship with another senior also came from his country. He said he is no longer keeping the friendship with her because when he just came here, he didn't know many places especially the places to buy his food, so he asked her for helping and buying and now he doesn't need her anymore. I was thinking like: is it a normal thing to him? When will I be the next one?
What should I do now guys? I am thinking of leaving but it is definitely hard and expensive for a foreigner to live alone here in Japan. Is there anyway I can find a shared house with a more considerate housemate?
Many thanks for reading this post. I also want to post this to kind of releasing the stress I felt recently. Thank you for your time reading it.
P/S: Some of you asked me why did I move to live with him, I think probably because I was so naive. He contacted me before to live together to reduce the rent costs. And before deciding to live together, I have sent him some basic rules that we need to consider to have a good sharing. He agreed all of them and also mentioned that we are both mature and we know which things are good or bad. That's probably one of my biggest mistakes so far.
by Prestigious_Army8055