I’m not using “clearing out the closet” in the metaphorical sense here but I can literally clear out the closet next to my door which has started to stink. The second-most difficult thing to comprehend in this country (after mobile phone contracts for someone in my situation) is sorting out the rubbish and I finally got the information I needed at orientation. I already had some information from here (pages 20 and 21) but I got some more information during orientation which was enough to get most of the rubbish out of the apartment. There are still a few things lying around that I’m not sure about, but I’ll sort them out soon enough. Rubbish is sorted into: paper, plastic, PET (a type of plastic used for bottles.. poly-ethylene.. T? I don’t know..), aluminium/steel cans, burnable, and non-burnable. The stickers on the bins have faded so much that only the largest kanji are still readable and any english that might ever have been there, along with any helpful images, have been removed by the sun. Fortunately, I remembered my kanji from the chapter we studied in university (紙: paper; 可燃: burnable, 不燃: non-burnable, etc). One of the stickers was entirely washed out but going by the process of elimination, it was the PET one. Phew!
I keep seeing references to a calendar but I can’t find it anywhere. I wonder where it is. ごみ収集カレンダー (garbage collection calendar) or “the days marked on the calendar” are written all over the place but I still can’t find it… even on the sheet with the heading 「ごみ収集カレンダー」 (hope you remember that from earlier on in this sentence).
The entrance ceremony is in an hour so I’m going to try to find some lunch at the Zig Zag, if it’s open. I believe that’s the bar/café/restaurant run by Declan Murphy. また後でねー
