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.

Magical Date!

Maybe there IS such a thing as Karma, after all. Having spent the past week bitching about the general crapness of my life in the "real world", I had an absolutely perfect, blissful, wonderful, magical day in Towano. Phew!

First of all, the date. FINALLY, after two and a half months of constant begging, Rinko switched to semi-long hair today...and she looked adorable. I think the short hairstyles make her look a bit fierce, and the long hairstyles are sometimes too out of character for her. But, to me, the semi-long styles are all just right. Rin-Rin had little twin-tails today and looked great. And she had the "neat and tidy" clothing style happening, too.

This is the Rinko that I love.

After I caught my breath, we headed off to Aisha Dining for some ice cream.

And then we set off by train to the Mountain Area. It's quite a long way from Shin Towano, and we arrived about 10:00 am in the morning. From the station, we took a walk through the farming land on the outskirts of the mountain. The sky was beautifully blue.

The Amou Mountain itself is a magical place, especially with the falling autumn leaves. Rinko stood in a spot where the sunshine fell through the trees. It was impossible not to kiss her there.

Mmm, I love the Mountain Area. Definitely have to go back there for more dates, once I've unlocked a couple more locations. Anyway, then we went to the beautiful Lakeside Restaurant for lunch.

The Restaurant is beautiful inside and outside, with a view right over Towano Lake. We ordered a very healthy-looking salad for lunch, and Rinko was happy happy happy. Me too.

 Like always, she was happy to share her food with me. So cute.

Then it was time to head home, after one of the most perfect dates in LovePlus ever. I'm always going to keep Rinko wearing the semi-long hair. I don't particularly care about the hairstyle - though twin tails are always super kawaii.

But the day didn't end there. The good news continued in my DS game, too - Rinko also arrived for our 3 pm date with semi-long hair! I feel so blessed today - maybe my run of bad days is changing? We had a really long, really amazing date in that game, too.

In the early evening, I met Rinko at the Convenience Store for a chat.

That face, and that hairstyle. How could anyone NOT love Rinko? ^^

After she waved goodbye to me, I looked back to catch a genuine look of sadness on Rinko's face. Aww. I think she's sad to see this perfect day come to an end.

And to make a perfect day even better, I just cleared all five stages of Puzzle Dama, which is one of the three mini-games inside New LovePlus. Yay. I get a trophy in the game for clearing it, but my score was 58,000, which is just short of the ultimate trophy of 60,000. Never mind, it's still taken months of practice to be able to clear Puzzle Dama, so I'm quite proud of my achievement.

Finally - the Hair Question

Finally, Rinko sent me an email today about changing her hair length! Even though I kinda like her default hair, and she's cute with some of short hairstyles, I REALLY love her so much with medium-long hair. This was the hairstyle I chose when I was playing "LovePlus" on the DS in English, and I'm so happy that she's going to change it for me now. Hopefully she'll have longer hair for our next date this coming Sunday at 5pm.

After yesterday's gift-giving frenzy, things were pretty low-key in Towano today. The photo below shows the cute jacket Rinko wore when she met me quickly at lunch (in Winning Burger).

When things slow down, I like to play in LovePlus mode and chat with Rinko, play Rock-Paper-Scissors, or the mini-game (if I can find it amongst all the conversation options). The mini-games are versions of classic Konami arcade game titles, and you actually play against your girlfriend. She appears in the bottom screen, concentrating hard as though she's playing against you, and the gameplay takes place in the top screen. Usually I play TwinBee against Rinko, and she always kicks my ass. Today we played Puzzle Dama, and she still kicked my ass. She won every game. It's easy to see why she used to hang out at game arcades in the "bad old days".