What It Means to Live in a Shared Residential Building — Thoughts Triggered by a Pest Control Notice — 2026/5/23 (Sat) R8

Kanon
May 23, 2026 10:15

Today, I found a notice in my mailbox about optional pest control treatment for residents’ rooms.

It offered cockroach control, mite and flea treatment, and centipede prevention. Residents who wished to participate could apply.

I do not plan to apply this year.

I have only recently moved in, and there is not much food in my room. I cook brown rice occasionally and make kanten jelly, but there is hardly anything that could really be called food waste.

Still, while reading the notice, I found myself wondering what it truly means to live in a shared residential building.

In a detached house, you basically manage your own home yourself.

But life here feels a little different.

Garbage is not stored individually until collection day; the facility handles it as part of a larger system. Electricity, too, moves through the structure of the building itself, even when I feel I am barely using any.

And pests, apparently, are also not something that can be solved simply by keeping one’s own room clean.

Insects do not understand the boundaries between rooms.

They move through the spaces between people’s lifestyles, the building’s structure, the facility’s management system, the seasons, and the humidity.

So perhaps this is not merely a story about insects.

Perhaps it is really about what it means to live in a shared residential environment.

Even when we think we are living independently, in reality we are living within many layers of shared management and invisible systems.

Recently, I found myself thinking similar thoughts about electricity costs.

Little by little, I feel I am relearning that I am no longer simply “living alone,” but living within the larger mechanisms of a shared building and community.

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