While the museum opened at 11:00 am; it still took the girls another 15 minutes until they could buy their tickets. They decided to buy the "deluxe pass," the most expensive of the ticket options, a deluxe was 2.5 times more than the regular "basic pass." However, because of the start of the new school year, the museum had a special open to JROTC students that could let them purchase a deluxe pass for the price of a "premium pass" which was the second most expensive of the three types, at 1.5 times the price of the basic pass. In addition to their tickets, they were all each given a free pamphlet that would help them navigate through the museum and gave a short description of each of the exhibits and features.
"This is gonna be so much fun," Yukari squealed, practically vibrating with anticipation and excitement.
"Good thing they had that student discount," Annelien commented. "The deluxe normally costs 45 credits, but we were able to buy them at 27 instead." Opening up her pamphlet and looking at the map in the middle, "so what should we do first?"
"By the way?" Saori inquired. "How does your credit system work, like how much yen would equal one credit? I still haven't been able to convert my money."
"I've actually wondered that myself," Hana joined.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised, after all aside from Miho, you all just recently arrived here." Annelien summarized. "Simply credits are to us what yen is to you all. We actually use a smaller denomination system for credits like you guys do with yen though the actual numbers are more like the U.S. dollar, though unlike most other countries including yours, we use thin rectangular sheets of metal around the size of two fingers pressed together." Annelien pressed her pointer and middle fingers together to help visualize what a credit sheet would look like. "As for an exchange rate," Annelien began. "Unlike almost every other country, we don't use a fiat currency system, I mean our credits aren't made of gold or silver, but the credit is tied to the value of a commodity."
"Wait, so do you mean you guys are still using the gold standard?" Yukari asked intriguingly.
"Kind of," Annelien answered. "Well really we don't use gold as the standard for the credit but we use something else, tiberium." Seeing how the other four girls were still confused, "I'm not gonna go into too much detail about tiberium, but it's a very valuable resource that's only found on our continent. While I know there's no yen value for tiberium, a good method is to take the yen value of gold and multiply it by 1.5, since an ounce of tiberium is worth 1 and a half ounces of gold."
Saroi's face looked as if her soul was violently ejected from her body. "So you're essentially saying our yen is pretty much worthless here?" Saori looked on the brink of tears as she pulled out her wallet and looked at the yen coins and bills in it.
"I must admit I'm quite concerned about this myself," Hana admitted, with Yukari nodding in agreement with her. "But, my family does flower arrangement and sell of crafts, as long as business is good for us then we shouldn't have any money troubles."
"Me and my family are in the same boat as you," Yukari said. "My parents own their own barber shop that's also our home so we should be fine as long as business is good."
"But hey don't worry Saori," Annelien said to an increasingly depressed Saori, "I'm sure you and your family shouldn't have any trouble with getting financial aid from our welfare program and then being able to stand on your own feet soon."
After that touchy and shocking chat about the difference in currency systems, the other four girls also open their pamphlets, Soari is the first to speak up, "why don't we head over to the restaurant, I'm actually starting to get kinda hungry."
"But didn't you have breakfast like two hours ago?" Yukari asks surprised.
"Well yeah," Saori answers. "But I woke up at 9:30, and in order to have a chance at making it on time, I only had what could be considered a snack for breakfast." She explains sheepishly.
"Well, we could head over to look at the menu," Miho suggested. "That would help us prepare for lunch since it seems none of us brought anything from home. As for what I'm wanting to do at the moment, I want to try out the interactive activities area and maybe look at the continent's own military history, I think it's called tiba or tibera."
"It's Tiberia," Annelien corrected, the continent that their schoolship technically belonged to is called Tiberia, since for the most part history, this continent was submerged underneath the Pacific Ocean, it wasn't really surprising that outsiders won't know its name or be able to pronounce it.
"Oh wow, they have a World War 2 area here," Yukari asked, her face looking more and more like a child who had just discovered an entire city that was made of nothing but candy and other sweets.
"I'd like to look at the theater here," Hana said. "I know that it won't be showing any unrelated to military stuff, but I'm still interested in watching what's gonna be shown there."
"I guess it's a good thing we decided to buy the deluxe pass," Miho remarked. "If we decided to buy just the standard we could only do the exhibits; and with the premium, we could only do one or the other and we'd have to make that determination when we would buy the tickets, but with the deluxe pass we can do everything here." She went to further highlight just how much of a good deal they got on the account that they were JROTC students and that this was still the beginning of the new school year.
With what seemed like everyone's desires now known, the group then decided to head over to the cafe to address Saroi's apparent hunger, as well as to quickly look at what they could eat later whenever they decided to have lunch. With Saori satisfying her hunger with a muffin for the time and everyone having an idea of what they were gonna eat for lunch.
They decided to check out the World War 2 area since it was right next to the cafe. Yukari immediately took charge, leading everyone and describing all of the tanks on display, she even shared some facts that weren't on the information panels, like how there was really another version of the Tiger 1 called the "Porshe Tiger" that didn't see action since a competition between it and the Tiger made by Hunschel ended with Porshe's defeat; or how the reason the Panther's frontal armor was sloped unlike almost every other main battle tank in the German army was because they were inspired by the Soviet t-34 and how a Panther cost half as much as a Tiger 1.
"You seem very knowledgeable on all of this," Annelien commented.
"More like she's gone crazy," Saori interjected.
"Oh, sorry," Yukari seemingly apologized, lowering her head and slightly blushing.
"I honestly find it more enjoyable with Yukari here, she makes it seem more lively than if we were just looking at the tanks and reading their information panels." Hana said, and the other three girls nodded their heads in agreement.
There wasn't just tanks on display, there were also planes and infantry equipment, planes were mostly hung from the ceiling and the infantry equipment was either on display like the tanks, on infantry mannequins, or on display cases.
After an hour and a half of exploring, chatting and taking a bunch of pictures, really everyone taking a picture with Yukari in the World War 2 area, "Well that was certainly fun, I don't know about you girls but my feet and legs are starting to get sore." Saori said.
"Really, I'm still feeling pretty good," Yukari commented.
As Saori turned to look at Miho and Annelien, "I feel good, I can still keep going," Miho said, followed by Annelien nodding her head.
"How are you three not tired, we've been walking for almost two hours straight?" Saori asked somewhat whiningly.
"Compared to PT at MLS, this is nothing," Yukari answered, with a proud smile.
"Don't worry Saori, if you want to sit down and take a break, we can do that." Miho suggested reassuringly.
"Oh, you're the best Miporin," Saori exclaimed happily.
"Then how about we check out the theater for a bit," Hana suggested, pointing to a set of double doors with the sign "theater" right next to them.
"That's a great idea," Saori gladly agreed.
The group were able to enter the theater and were able to quickly find seats since it was almost 1 pm and most people were either out for lunch or somewhere else in the museum, the fact that there were signs and staff checking against people eating and drinking in the theater room also helped deter people from having lunch in the theater and take up seats.
They watched through two viewings, the first one was dedicated to the last war that had engulfed Tiberia, leading to both it sinking to the bottom of the Pacific and it unifying for the first time after centuries of war and division. The second was primarily dedicated to the many advancements in space technology; primarily on the military side but since many things made for military use would eventually be adapted for civilian use, they also covered the civilian sector as well.
"I think it's about time we have some lunch now," Miho stated; getting up from her seat, Annelien and Yukari followed suit, followed afterwards by Saori and Hana.