In Japan, every stranger that came to my house opened the front door, entered the foyer, and shouted something like "Mrs. Mrs. is anybody home?"
Nobody ever knocked.
The first time the salesman or whomever and I were equally scared. He didn't expect to see a gaigin and I certainly didn't expect to see someone enter the house. He beat feet. I decided it was someone looking for the Japanese people who lived at the house before. However, the next day at the office, I was told to expect visits like this all the time, because I lived in a Japanese village that had no other foreigners and still had the owners Japanese name carved in the stone gate post.
So I decided to have fun. The next time I came out with a bottle of sake and acted drunk - motioning for the guy to come on in. He fled. The next guy came while I was making my bed. I threw the sheet over my head, jumped into the hall and screamed at the top of my voice. That visitor screamed just as loud. I didn't see him, but he may have been a she based upon the tone of the scream.
When I told my secretary about my pranks, she gave me one of those sounds made when sternly sucking air in through your teeth. I already knew, in the short time I had been in Japan, that was not a good sound. It wasn't long before the secretary and a couple of department heads that could speak pretty good English came in and talked to me. Basically they didn't think it was a good idea. The visitors were doing everything according to custom in Japan. I was being rude, etc. Bottom line, I didn't have any more fun with visitors. Normally, when they saw I was not Japanese, they bow bow bowed themselves out. Later when I had learned enough language, I found out some were collecting for the TV, some were collecting for social security, and some turned out to be neighbors. One guy had a hand cart loaded with four or five cases of beer. When I told him to leave it, I got the same teeth suck wind sound. After much So Sorry, he took it down the street.
The entry doors I had were sliders without locks. The only thing I could have done was put a stick or something in the track. That probably would have caused some sort of international incident, so I just got used to it. Three years living in the village in a house with no locks and never lost a thing or had any problems. Glad I didn't kill anyone.
There was one guy I wanted to kill. Seems like my neighborhood contributions helped pay a fire crier to go around right after everyone was in bed asleep. This guy had two blocks of wood. He would beat the blocks together and then yell something at the top of his lungs. Apparently, I wasn't supposed to go outside and yell back. At least according to the secretary. Turned out he was saying something like make sure all your fires are out or similar. I had installed a Sears oil stove in my house that had a thermostat. I piped it into the chimney. So sometimes at night, my chimney would be active when everyone else had a cold chimney. The people at work finally figured out what was going on and wrote me a note to give him. He stopped lingering at my place. Still walked around at random at night. Irritating, but I didn't try to kill him. Good thing. With that job, he was probably able to take care of himself.
