Local people

Due to the frightful event of our phone being disconnected, I had to consult with my landlady upon the matter of an indecipherable letter from the phone company. All I could make out was "thankyou most humbly" and "please". What a crisis! So my landlady most kindly invited me in for tea, where I got to meet her elderly mother and their silky toy dog, Koko-chan. Together we sat around the kotatsu, which is an interesting modern hybrid of the coffee table and the electric blanket. Marvellous! So with blankies up to our hips, we nattered in broken-Japanese-English for a few hours and I was treated to Belgian chocolate mousse and green tea chocolate. The mother laughed when she heard my surname - apparently if I mispronounce it "BaaBaa", I will be telling people that my surname is an insulting term for an old woman. Yikes! The landlady and her mother called me kawaii (cute) and said I should come again. Huzzah for local people!