12.5.05: Sorry for the slight delay in the update of this page! I
ended up adding a lot of detail and since I had a 12-hour work day yesterday I
wasn't able to finish the page ahead of schedule. I hope it looks decent. I drew
the top left panel from a photo of Omiya Station I took when I was in Japan.
There is a department store in the station called Lumine (I added a hyphen). It
has several floors of clothing and some housewares, and on the ground/basement
floor there is a huge grocery section with boxed lunches, sweets, fish, and
sake. In the second panel we see Mitsuru going through the entrance to the train
platforms. A lot of people who take the trains every day have train passes like
a Suica card, which you can add money to whenever you like so you don't have to
stop at ticket kiosks and search for change during the busy morning and evening
hours (I have one!). Mitsuru doesn't take the trains that often, so he just got
a regular ticket. You slip it into the front and it will pop out with a hole in
it as you go to the train, and when you get off, you slip it through the gate
again and it disappears. (This may seem like waaay too much information just for
one scene . . . . but I like to babble ^^;) The train he's on is pretty
packed--and has a few familiar faces on it! Two of my characters from
Cardboard
Angel, Mayuko and Yuuji, can be seen to the left (Mayuko has a backpack on).
To the right, Is Gina (creator of Red String), her husband Adam, and myself
(spiky hair) and my husband Todd (with earphones). And, at the far right, is
Kouichi from my
SFaK
series. I like to put stuff like this into comics XD;;