Field Trip

The first three time-slots today were taken up with a school field trip. I'm not really sure what this was all about, but I found myself visiting the farm area with Rinko and the other kids from school.

The highlight of the day was when Rinko produced another delicious bento lunch to share with me.

We stayed until quite late in the day, and then it was time to go home.

Tuesday - First Bento!

I leave for work pretty early each morning and usually take a bus into work around 7 am. It's around a 35 minute trip, so lately I've started playing the less embarrassing parts of NLP+ on the way. Anything involving skinship and kissing is out, because the bigger screens of the new console mean that EVERYONE can see what you're doing. I usually open my game, choose activities for the day, play through the Seishun 1 Page episodes, and then one of the mini-games and perhaps LovePlus mode. It's a pleasant way to pass the time.

That's why the first photos each day have been from Rinko's Seishun 1 Page story, which seem a little out of order. Here are today's shots, which feature Rinko checking out a venue for her band to play their first "live".

As usual, I met Rinko at various locations around the school in an effort to level them up quickly. I have most school locations up to Level 2 by now.

I had a pleasant surprise at lunchtime, when Rinko met me with a box lunch (bento) she had prepared. She used to do this most days in NLP, but it's the first time in the new game.

I met up with Rinko this afternoon at the recently-opened Coffee Shop.

And later at the Convenience Store...

...and Fountain Park.

Monday - Back To School

Back to school today for a new semester (and a new school year, in fact), complete with singing the Towano High school song and shots of the school backgrounds with falling sakura leaves. But even the school environment looks bigger and more colourful on the new 3DS LL console!

After the opening ceremony, Rinko was waiting for me. Even though it's spring, the girls are still wearing their winter uniforms.

I called Rinko out of class in the morning for a brief catch-up, and booked a date with her for Sunday morning at Karaoke (I tried to book the date at the Art Gallery, but she didn't like it).

And, just like the 3DS game, Rinko showed up at lunch-time in the hallway.

I thought she might have prepared a bento lunch for me, but from memory you need to level up your Lover Ranking quite a bit first. Instead, she sat next to me to eat lunch and mentioned something about sandwiches.

And, at the end of the day, Rinko-chan was waiting to walk home with me. What a faithful girlfriend.

I met her in the afternoon at Winning Burger (Fast Food) for a short date. I still only have the two date locations in Shin Towano unlocked - Fountain Park and Winning Burger - but at leas now they are both at Level 3. Hopefully this means I can check out the Flea Markets at Fountain Park this coming Sunday.

Finally, even though it started raining, we went back to good old Fountain Park at night.

I just realised something about the new game. As much as I love the fact that the designers have gone all-out retro and made the second sign-on screen (with your girlfriend's heart in a big circle) the same as the old DS game, the different seasonal backgrounds you used to get in the 3DS game are gone. I guess it would be impossible to have both.

Thursday

Rinko was in a sunny and adorable mood when she arrived this morning to make breakfast for me. It's so nice to see her happy face first thing in the morning...

She seemed a little apprehensive about the Bento she'd made for lunch, though. I'd asked for Japanese food, and she wasn't entirely sure how I'd like it.

But once I assured Rinko that the food tasted good, she was fine. I love the sparkly detailing on her chopsticks in the next shot. It's always the attention to detail that has made LovePlus a great game and not just a very good one.

I was quite late playing the afternoon session today - after 9:00pm, which I hate - and I was amazed that poor Rinko was still waiting faithfully to walk home from school with me. Poor girl!

She seemed fine about it, though. With my game in NLP drawing near to its end, I'm thinking about going back through all my game photos (more than 4000) and putting together a short retrospective of the best and most memorable moments.

Happy Six-Month Anniversary!

Today marked another significant milestone in my LovePlus history - my six month anniversary (in the current game) with Rinko. Because I know this will probably be my last anniversary with Rinko in New LovePlus (before I switch over to NLP+ hopefully in early April), I wanted to make it a memorable day. And it was.

No breakfast this morning, but Rin-chan was waiting with her umbrella to walk me to school.

Despite acting tough sometimes, she is really a very kind girl. As soon as we arrived at school, I called Rinko to meet me so I could give her my anniversary gift.

I gave her a new pair of shoes, which she was delighted with...

...and she gave me, for the sixth month running, the matching boy-girl sweatbands. Not that I don't appreciate a gift - ANY gift - but I really hope this self-repeating bug is fixed in NLP+. It didn't happen in my first game, but it's happened a lot in this one. As your relationship with a girl progresses, you want something more than sweatbands. Anyway, we kissed briefly and stopped for a chat before going back to class.

Rinko had lunch ready for us...

I don't know if it was to make up for giving me a recycled anniversary gift, but Rinko met me in the Library this afternoon and produced a second gift.

It's the gift you don't actually get to open - so you just have to use your imagination. So let's imagine that it wasn't sweatbands. We finished up the day by walking home from school together.