Friday

A busy day in the real world today, going out to see the second Hobbit movie (The Desolation of Smaug), which was excellent. So just a few quick snapshots from Towano. Rinko met me this afternoon at the Tennis Club room to give me a surprise present (something I always love)...

She's really a very thoughtful girlfriend. Anyway, today I ended up my game of LovePlus on the old DS console. I think I've just about had all the benefit I can from playing the English patch, and it's a lot to keep two games going. Plus, when the new console arrives next year, I REALLY just want to be playing one game of New LovePlus+.

I'm a little bit sad, but then I've really enjoyed playing the patched version of the old game for so long. A huge thank you to the dedicated group of fans who made the English patch. I just wish that Konami would take the hint and do the same thing...

Up And Down Day

I had a lot of frustration with the new game I started on the DS yesterday (with the English patch). Despite getting Rinko's confession and working through the tutorials, I was completely unable to kiss Rinko or even hold her hand! Her affection went right down to the point where she almost gave me the skull face, and everything I did just seemed to make matters worse.

With little hope of fixing the game, I deleted and started a new game (yet again!). Finally this afternoon I got a confession from the green personality Rinko (again!) and things went smoothly this time. I played through a date in Skip Mode, unlocked the kissing and skinship features, and got Rinko up to the big happy face without any problems. Now life is good.

For anyone who's never played the DS version of LovePlus before, here's some advice about how to proceed after you get confession from your girl:

1. After confession, the game will automatically save and return to the sign-on screen.

2. Open in Real Time mode. Be sure to select the "Practice Skinship" option and work through the skinship tutorial.

3. Book a date with your girlfriend on the coming Sunday (the game should prompt you to do this anyway).

4. Save the game and go back to the sign-on screen.

5. Open in Skip Mode. Book a date with the girl for the upcoming Sunday in Skip Mode. After this, select the "Practice Kissing" option and work through the kissing tutorial.

6. Do not close or save the game.

7. Continue playing in Skip Mode until Sunday, then play through the date. You should now be able to access both skinship and kissing normally.

8. After the date is over, save the game and go back to the sign-on screen.

You can now enjoy your new life (in either Real Time or Skip Mode) with your girlfriend. Just remember that the kissing tutorial is only available in Skip Mode, and until you work through this you WILL NOT be able to kiss your girlfriend. So I really recommend the above steps, because they're the easiest way to avoid the kind of problems I had.

Anyway, my "main" Rinko game on the 3DS got off to a good start when Rinko was waiting to walk me to school again. I always like this.

One thing went wrong, though. I got an email this morning starting with "Ano sa..." and which had a number 9 in it. I couldn't find it in my list of emails, so I selected the first option (like I always do when I'm not sure what the message says) and forgot about it. When I opened the game again at lunch time, I had a bad email from Rinko calling me "baka" (dummy). Then I realised that the morning email had been asking me to meet her at 9:00am.

Note to self: Have to be more careful of these emails in the future.

Anyway, fortunately my affection level with Rinko is so astronomically high that she's willing to forgive just about anything. I called her out for a quick meet-up to apologise, and everything was back to normal. What a day!

I met Rin-chan late in the afternoon at the Video Rental Store.

For anyone who's visited the Mandarake stores in Japan, or some of the shops in Nakano Broadway, this shot is sure to bring back memories.

So it was an up and down day. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more normal in both games. If there is such a thing as "normal", that is...

Very First After School Date

Today was an important day, because I managed to do something I've never done before in 18+ months of playing New LovePlus - I had my very first After School Date with Rinko.

After School Dates are a special kind of date. Normally you can't date your girlfriend on a school day - only on Sundays (except for holidays). In After School Dates, your girlfriend meets you at the end of the school day and goes out with you, wearing her school uniform. Everything else is the same as a regular Sunday date.  Oh, and I worked out what I was doing wrong when I tried to do an After School Date before. If anyone wants to try it, here's how it works:

1. Call your girlfriend early in the morning, just after the 8:00am timeslot starts.

2. You have to call BEFORE you've booked a date for the upcoming Sunday.

3. Book a date (same as usual) but select the afternoon of the same day for the day of the date.

4. You can only go out in a place you can walk to from school - that is, it must be in Shin Towano area (New Towano).

5. The time will default to 3:30pm, but you can change this. I changed my date to 4:00pm without any problems, so any time before the 6:00pm timeslot starts should be fine.

Note that you can only play this type of date in Real Time Mode - so for those of us who work through the day, it's kinda awkward (unless you can take a really long toilet break ^^). Still, I wanted to try it - and it worked!

Rin-chan met me in the corridor at 4:00pm.

We walked out of school together and headed off for our date on the way home.

Then we arrived at the Temple for the main part of our date. The autumn leaves look so nice in the background of this shot.

Interestingly we were able to go into the main courtyard of the Temple, which you never get to see on short dates. It reminds me so much of the beautiful Towa temple we visited in Harajuku.

After the date we had a second option, and I chose to have a meal. Sadly when you have to stay around the school area, there aren't a lot of fancy options for food. I chose Aisha Dining, because Rin usually likes going there.

The lemon kaki-gori (shaved ice) is not exactly perfect for autumn, with the weather turning colder. Rinko looked a little unsure about eating it.

When the date was over, I walked Rinko back home and kissed her goodbye. It's nice to date Rin in her school uniform, which doesn't normally happen, so I think I like After School Dates. Trouble is, you burn up all your hearts before the weekend.

Now that I stopped my 3DS game with Manaka, I thought I might have some fun and start off a game with Rinko on the old DS version of the game (with the English patch). I played a lot through the day, and the green personality Rinko confessed to me after just 63 days. I thought it might be fun to go back to the beginning, where I first started playing the old game with Rinko. And the DS version of LovePlus is much less demanding that the 3DS one - so having a second game going this way actually shouldn't be too bad. But from now on I will only ever date Rinko (unless Konami decides to put Akira Yukino into the new game........then I might have to think twice.

Tuesday

Today was a busy day, starting out with a long but interesting episode of Rinko's "Seishun No. 1 Page" story. Rinko and her band ("In The Rye") are starting to rehearse for their first live performance at the Live House. The most obvious thing you'll notice in these shots is the change-over to winter school uniforms in Towano today (the 1st of October). These uniforms are dark blue with long sleeves.

In the proper game it was raining, so Rinko was waiting to meet me with her umbrella and walk me to school.

Luckily the showers had cleared up and there were blue skies by lunchtime, so Rink had lunch with me on the school roof. She'd made another bento for lunch...without the cute face this time.

She even shared some of her bento with me. How cute!

And this afternoon, she walked me home from school as well. I really can't get enough of Rinko-chan with this new hairstyle. I'm going to let her keep it for as long as possible.

Here's an extreme close-up:

Now that it's Autumn, the trees at the Shrine have bright orange leaves - and there are a lot of falling leaves, too. It's very romantic.

I've booked a date for Rinko at the Zoo this Sunday at 3:00 pm. Oh yeah, and I finally reached Level 4 in the 3DS game today. Yay!

In my DS game with Manaka, I finally went to the Shopping Mall and bought a gift for her birthday, which is coming up this Saturday. I bought her a pretty formal dress, so I hope she likes it. I've been playing with the orange Manaka for almost a week now, and I'm enjoying the old game with the English patch very much.

Thursday...Out Of Order

For some reason, my in-game camera has scrambled up the order of my pictures from today - so here they are, in no particular order (because I'm too tired/lady to sort them out). Firstly, from this evening's short meet-up with Rinko at Winning Burger:

Putting the zoom lens to good use for this charming close-up:

Rinko was there to walk home with me this afternoon when school finished for the day:

Going back in time to lunch, Rinko sat down to share her lunch with me (but I couldn't see the actual lunch today).

I love Rinko's face in the next close-up. Out of the three girls in LovePlus, I think she is the only one who actually looks better in the 3DS game. In my opinion, both Manaka and Nene look nicer in the old DS version of the game.

And lastly - the first section I actually played this morning - these great shots from Rinko's "Seishun No. 1 Page". After arguing about roles in the band (guitar, bass, drums), Rinko met me in the street carrying her guitar case, and we went to check out the local musical instrument store.

All in all, it's been a fun day. It was also my first full day of dating the "orange" personality Manaka in the DS game with the English patch. After everything's said and done, I still like the old game - the character design is charming, the kissing/skinship is better, and LovePlus mode is better too. While I can meet up with her and touch her, I can't kiss her until after our first date on Sunday.

Here are a few photos from the LovePlus iPhone app with Rinko wearing the dress I bought her using my travel points:

And today, while I was walking to work from my bus after breakfast, I did a mini "date" to earn some points for Manaka - but sadly, not enough to buy her an outfit just yet...