Garbage is pretty insane here in Toyama City. We have to divide our garbage into different piles. There's burnable, non-burnable, plastic wrappers and containers, cardboard boxes, paper boxes, newspaper, cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles. Certain things should be returned to the store you got them at, like styrofoam trays for food. Then there is a schedule for when they pick up everything. Burnable is twice a week, and most other things are sometime every two weeks, depending on the item. It is really confusing, and I don't think I am doing it quite right yet. I discovered that I am in a different area than my school told me I am, so I was reading the wrong schedule. i am in Hoshii-cho, but they told me I was in Horikawa, which it turns out is the next block over. I figured it out when I realized the garbage was getting picked up at a different time than I expected it to. I asked my neighbor, this really friendly old man about it and he explained in Janglish that I was in Hoshii-cho. Doh! Now I need to redo the garbage calendar I wrote out for myself and my neighbor.

So my neighbor Elita has a bike, but it was totally messed up when I arrived. The chain had slipped off the gears attached to the wheel and gotten wedged horribly in the gears. We took it to the neighborhood bike shop, and he said "no hope." So I got some tools and basically chiseled the chain out of the gears, which took a lot of effort and some improvising. Then our neighbor showed up with some nicer tools and oiled the chain and gears, and we put the bike back together again. Unfortunately this did not fix the bike entirely. The gear shifter is somehow damaged, so the bike is messed up still. However, now the bike rolls on its own, which is an improvement. Before, the chain was preventing the back wheel from moving, so we had to carry it to the bike store. Now, Elita can push her bike downtown to the big repair store to see if the bike can be fixed there. So at least it wasn't all for nothing. My bike is quite old, and I have considered buying a new or used bike too. I found a new one for 12800 yen (110 dollars), but I will check the used bike store first.