⼈ - People (i)

Last week May and I were invited to dinner at room 207 in our apartment building. (I live in 210 and May lives in 211). It was all arranged through notes on the reception notice board, which was an interesting experience in itself. So here's how we met Togawa-san:

Dear リリ (Lily) and メイ (May)

Hi!! I'm Mariko Togawa. I live in the room 207.
Welcome to Japan!!
I'd like to be friends with you. Let's talk together. Are you free on Monday night (9/17)? I'll cook something for dinner.

Though I'm poor at English. I'll try. Please teach me. Nice to meet you.

Have a nice day. ☆☆☺☺
From Mariko

We replied to this note, saying, thank you, Monday was fine etc. We got a reply to that a day later:

Dear Lily and May

Thank you for you message.
I'm glad to hear you can come Monday night ☆ My friend Nami who lives in room 305 will also come. How about pm 6:30?
I'm looking forward to seeing you.
I'm happy you can talk Japanese. Why don't we use 2 languages when we talk. It may be funny ☺

まょう⽇もイしごとがんば3うね!!
Let's enjoy our job.
From Mariko.

We went over on Monday evening as planned and had a fantastic home-cooked meal with Mariko and Nami. We ate a Japanese curry dish, cheesy home-made pasta (Mariko said it took her four hours to make!), miso soup, rice (a necessity in any Japanese meal) and nutto, which is the Japanese Marmite – you either love it or you hate it. I think it is soy beans in a vegetable paste...? I will try and get a recipe for it or something because it is really difficult to explain. Oh, and for dessert we had a wonderful yoghurt/jelly pudding thing, which Mariko is going to show me how to make, yay! I had a really great evening with them both and we've already made some loose but numerous plans to meet up again. These include going shopping, exchanging DVD's and music, and more eating. Sounds good to me.