Best of luck to you. For 2 years, the neighbor thought it looked nice. For 2 more years, my parents agreed and it moved along the property line into our yard. For the following 30 years, my mother has been mowing her lawn. For 30 years, the bamboo doesn't care. It's still there mixed in with the grass.
Doesn't it also spread, in addition to runners, by also seeding itself? And, if I recall correctly, if the ground sees bamboo near itself, it magically sprouts another bamboo plant.
Also, if there are 100 bamboo plants in your yard and you attempt to kill them off with chemicals, they wait for their chance - the moment you're distracted by pausing to wipe the sweat from your brow, one of them runs around you and replants itself in a safe spot. The next day, it reproduces itself in 150 places just to show you who's boss.
For what it's worth, I learned this lesson trying to get rid of some sumac trees. We had about 40 of them when we moved into this house. I pulled out most of them, the trees responded by saying "f you" and sprouted about 400 trees. At the beginning of this year, my boys and I had a rule: 10 trees a day, apiece. I have 2 boys. Do the math to figure out how many remained after 2 weeks. Wrong. There were 800 two weeks later. Bamboo does the same thing.
