View source for 2024-02-07: A Great Food Scene

*'''Log: A Great Food Scene'''
*'''Cast:''' [[Character :: Akane Shinjo]], [[Character :: Shari Loom]]
*'''Where:''' Nouvelle Tokyo Institute of Technology
*'''OOC - IC Date:''' Feburary 7th, 2024 (June 0098)
*'''Summary''': ''Shari Loom is visiting a university campus, gets lost, and comes across a helpful student.  All she knows of Akane is how nice she is to someone new! Akane meanwhile gets to have a normal conversation!''

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 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
The Nouvelle Tokyo Institute of Technology is, while not Japan's greatest school, a top-five school for engineering and a top-20 school for a lot of other topics. ... Art therapy isn't actually one of them, but that's mostly on the arts side; the ''psychology'' side, where Akane needs more development, is actually pretty fine. It's not perfect, but... she's happy here, at least. University has been good for her emotional landscape, on the whole.

It's also, crucially, pretty ''easy''; Japanese university life is much less difficult than the stages before or after it. Right now, she's set up out on a park bench between the school's performing arts building and its engineering building with a sketchpad and a tablet computer. She occasionally glances down at the latter, but her attention seems to be more on a particular tree than anything else.

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

And being a good school in Japan, it's on Shari's current list of places to look--since she's sure not going back to Britannia.  And it's not ''that'' far from where she's living right now, so why not go and visit?

That was the theory, anyway, but Shari finds herself a little lost, stepping around the engineering building with a curious look and then... pausing.  She looks down at her map.  She looks up at the building.  "...Eh?"  in English, naturally.

But then she spots someone here who isn't on their way somewhere else, and considers for a moment.  it's rude, but...

Shari walks up to Akane.  In Japanese--she's in Japan--she says, "Sorry to bother you but... you go here, right?"

She pauses, looks at the tree, looks at Akane.  "But if you're busy that's cool."

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
"Huh? Yeah, I'm a first-year," Akane answers Shari, looking up for a moment. She looks vaguely familiar somehow, but only in the vaguest sense. (... It could just be that there's a lot of pink-haired girls between 16 and 23 around lately. One of those faces!)

"Are you touring the school or something?" she asks, her head tilting a little as she looks Shari over once. "And, uh --" she pauses, before adding, "I can do English," in English, "and French, too, if you're from the AEU," in French.

"I'm not super busy. This isn't for a class or anything... I'm just trying to learn how to do background art. Like, I can do pretty dynamic figures, but I've never really had any reason to pick up backgrounds..." She wobbles a hand, saying, "Anyway -- can I help you find something?" With how busy things have been -- and how much time she's spent with people who knew her whole deal -- it's been rare for her to just... be the same as any other university student, sometimes. She doesn't mind it in the least, though. ... It's nice.

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

"Awesome!"  Shari is indeed a pink-haired girl of eighteen, though she stands out from most pinkhairs by way of her dramatic eyeshadow and black lipstick.  She's dressed in an elegant, feminine sort of style, but not too formal--just nice.

"I am!" Shari confirms, and then--In English, "Oh good.  My Japanese is all over the place, ahahah..."  Her next-best language at this point is probably Spanish.

"Oh, OK."  Not for a class or anything... "That's cool.  I like art.  I know somebody who's all 'life is for art!' so..."

"Anyway yeah.  I'm soorta touring.  But, I don't know where to go to get a sense of what life's actually like here?  They gave me the nice lowdown about how the school wants its Experience to be, but I'm hoping to talk to somebody about what it's actually like to attend."

Shari shows no signs of knowing Akane's deal at all.

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
"Oh, yeah. I was totally helpless in French for like the first... year? I mostly learned it from action TV, which isn't, like, a great way to learn a language... you can pick up a lot that way, but I ended up with some kinda bad habits." Akane stretches out a bit, setting her stuff aside for a few moments.

"Hrrmm... well, there's the student center -- they might have walked you through there but I doubt they'd linger." Akane makes a gesture off to a building a decent ways away from there, saying, "It's nice. I set up over there sometimes."

Akane looks at Shari thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Are you planning on living in the dorms or off-campus? They're both kinda nice... I've seen the dorms, but I live off-campus." There's a pause as she seems to realize something, and then says, "Oh, uh -- Akane Shinjo. I'm in the art therapy program here." ... It feels nice to lead with ''that'' rather than anything else, too.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

"Wow, really?" Shari asks.  "That's cool, though.  Even if you've got bad habits it's got to be kind of dramatic and fun."

The student center!  And it's nice.  Shari glances that way, and then nods.  "I see.  It did look pretty nice."

"Hmmm," Shari says.  "I haven't quite gotten that far.  It's--It kinda depends?  I'm used to dorms from growing up at boarding schools, but there's someone I might want to try living with if I can get him to go to the same school I do..."  She trails off, a little shyer mentioning that than the rest.

It passes.  "Shari Loom!  I'm, um--Well, actually I'm kind of a dropout, so I won't be able to attend until next year if I get in.  But I'm..."  She considers, and gets to introduce herself a nicer way:  "I'm an intern at the Photon Power League."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
... despite the fact that Shari's shyest about talking about her presumable boyfriend, Akane catches on that. "I live with my girlfriend, so that I might actually have some advice about. If you can, try to find an opportunity to try it out for a couple weeks first? You learn some stuff. We both kinda figured out that we couldn't handle sleeping in the same room every night, for instance, so we found a place with a little loft you can put a futon in?"

... that little loft was probably not meant for sleeping in, but hey, she's clearly making it work. "But like, if that's on the table, definitely go for it."

She doesn't pry too much into Shari's actual love life, though, instead saying, "That's getting pretty common. I think the average age at graduation is getting to be like nineteen at this point... uh -- anyway, that's pretty cool. Dr. Kabuto seems nice." It's hard to tell if she's saying that from a 'he's a cool hero from TV' angle or a 'I have met him and he's cool' angle.

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

"Ooh, really?"  This is exactly the kind of advice Shari could use; she can't ask Dr. Kabuto or Dr. Yumi because they're disasters on love, and she can't ask Leina because she's a jet-setting space cop.  So...

"I'll do that.  Maybe have him out here for a visit for a bit."  A nod.  "I never thought about stuff like that.  I'm still really preliminary, I'm just... it'd be nice, you know?"  Sleeping in a separate loft... She doesn't ''think'' she'll want that, but it's novel.

"What's your girlfriend like?  --Oh, sorry, that's prying, isn't it?"  She's just curious.

But nineteen... Shari does ''not'' go into the circumstances of why--talking about being Britannian in Japan is not exactly a recipe for pleasant conversation--but, "Do you know him?" she wonders.  "He is pretty nice.  They're all really supportive.  I sort of didn't have a lot of places to go... But I ended up hitting it off with them."

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
"Yeah. I mean, it's usually only one night a week tops? But sometimes it's just... 'I'm kinda overwhelmed and need a little space.' That's the kind of stuff you only figure out once you've had a chance to live together a bit." ... Well, that's not entirely true; Akane probably could have figured that out if she just thought about it. But it was definitely ''easier'' to figure out.

Fortunately, Akane is very eager to talk about her girlfriend. "She's..." Akane turns a little pink. "She can be a little blunt and her sense of humor can get a tiny bit mean, but it's never in a cruel way. She's got this aura to her like... once she believes something, or if she thinks something is wrong, there's nothing that can stop her from making it real, making it better." Akane's fingers twirl in her black-brown hair a bit, and she says, "... She's really, really great. I don't wanna say, like, 'oh, I think she's going to make the whole world a better place,' or anything, but she made ''my'' world better."

... She catches herself gushing and turns a much brighter shade of pink. "Anyway, uh -- we've met a couple times. The first time was under kinda bad circumstances." The 'I didn't have a lot of places to go' sticks out to Akane, and she adds, "I think if you're in a bad situation you could do a lot worse than having Dr. Kabuto in your corner, too."

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 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

"Ohh, I see.  Hmm.  I guess I would want the option to be alone sometimes.  I never thought much about it because we're long-distance, so I have a lot of alone time already."  Wisdom!  She will remember this.

And Shari puts on a small smile when Akane gushes about her girlfriend.  This is something she likes to hear about.  "Wow... Somebody who's really sure of what she believes, huh?  That's so cool.  I wish I could be like that."  A nod, "Well, if she made your world better... That's part of the world, right?  It's a great start."

So they've met!  "Ah, yeah.  Me too," she admits of bad circumstances.  "But I think you're right.  When somebody tried to give me trouble, Dr. Yumi was really cool and brave about it.  I admire her a lot.  And it's fun to learn more about Photon Power.  I've always been pretty good with engineering--that's probably what i'll study?--but... it's something new, too."
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
"Hehehe... yeah," Akane says, a little dreamily. She sighs out a contented little sigh, then finally fully snaps back to the present moment. ... This'll probably mean she's extra affectionate later, though.

"I've never really had the knack for the science stuff? Like, I picked up some technical skills when I was interning with the Gutsy Global Guard -- uh, I mean, I'm still kind of doing that, but I switched departments so it's different now." Akane shakes the cobwebs out of her head and tries that one again. "If it's working for you that's really cool, though. I hope it works out."

... This conversation has the serious risk of going places she doesn't think she wants to go with someone she's only just met, though. She has to roll it back a bit...

"Anyway, uh -- if you're looking for more on student life, I'm honestly gonna say you need to hit up the rest of town. Japanese universities are pretty chill, so there's a ''lot'' of stuff people do off campus. Not all of it is my thing, but it's out there."

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

"It's actually--seeing the sketchbook, I was hoping you'd be the sort of person I could talk to.  My boyfriend is all about art, he's a theater guy too, so... I look out for people like that now."

"Oh that's so cool!"  The GGG!  But if Shari presses on ''that'', she's gonna have to volunteer some stuff of her own, so she likewise avoids it for now.  "Thanks," she says.  "I'm thinking about trying something different for a major, but on the other hand, I kind of want to go with what I know I'm good at?"

Student life... "I see," Shari says.  "I do like going out.  What's the food scene like?"

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
"Huh." Akane's legitimately surprised at the idea that being an art girl draws that kind of attention. "I did a little theater stuff in high school -- mostly, like, prop manager kind of stuff, though. No one at Montserrat wanted to do that kinda work and I figured I could at least try it."

Akane doesn't dig too deep into academics -- that's not really her speed anyway. Instead, she focuses on the food part. "... Okay, so I didn't know this when I moved here the first time, but I was in a kind of boring neighborhood. Once you get close to campus, especially, the food scene is ''really'' good. Nouvelle Tokyo's got a ton of international development, and I guess there's a lot of people trying to set down here with the big ex-Federation shakeup, so there's new restaurants popping up basically all the time? Pretty much every type of food you can think of, too..."

With a little smile, Akane says, "There's this Britannian-style breakfast buffet place that ''just'' opened up. But if you want the real secret..."

Akane leans in close. "Japanese university cafeterias are a steal! Like, they're not fine dining or whatever, but you'd probably be paying twice as much for the same kinda food. Three times if you're on a meal plan."

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

It does for Shari!  "Oh, cool!  That stuff's important, right?  Somebody has to do the stuff that isn't acting.  Me, I was mostly into athletics.  I did tennis."

"...Ooh, really?  I love international.  I really like Spanish food..."  International development!  Shari makes a 'ah yeah' face about the ex-Federation business, but that's probably no surprise.  "That's cool.  My boyfriend's in the AEU, so... if I could get him something familiar, that might help.  I don't really want to go back to Fed territory if I can help it."

But breafkast?  "Ooh."  Shari smiles, too, and listens when Akane leans in.  It's--

"Whoa, really?" she asks.  "That's super good to know!"

She nods.  "...Well, thanks, Aka--Um, Shinjo-san?"  She has to remember the polite way to do it.  "I appreciate the help.  I shouldn't take up all your time, but I feel a lot meeting someone like you here."

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem>
"I would get worn out in like five minutes... I've been trying to get more athletic but I'm still kinda..." Akane gestures vaguely, shaking her head. "You do have that kinda build, now that I think about it, though."

Akane tries not to get ultra-political with someone she only knows a little bit. Instead, she affirms, "You're welcome, Loom-san." Normally she would say not to be so formal, but for someone coming here from a foreign country, it's probably better to model good habits that will stay applicable wherever, right?

Akane gives her a nod, saying, "I hope the rest of your tour goes well!" before starting to sort out her stuff again. She ''does'' want to finish her drawing...

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
<poem>

"Haha.  That's OK.  It's not for everybody.  But getting out and getting moving kinda helps me clear my head."  That build?  Shari beams.  "Glad you noticed."

She works hard on her body!  And it does take some work.

She's OK with formal.  As long as it's not ''cold''.  And she's not completely foreign to the idea of it--it's  just that Japanese traditions weren't... well-loved, in the circles she ran in.

She smiles back at Akane.  "Thanks."

With that, Shari starts off in a new direction--maybe the student center...
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