Safety Dance, or What the Fxxx is Up with Nagoya?

Here's something most of you probably don't know unless you've lived in Japan: in Japan, September 1st is "celebrated" as "Disaster Prevention Day" (though we personally like to call it "Safety Day"). The yearly event was launched to commemorate the anniversary of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit Tokyo and surrounding areas and sparked massive fires throughout the city that claimed the lives of at least 105,000 people (that's nearly as many people as were killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima). Tokyo at the time was mostly made of wood-and-paper buildings, so you can only imagine how deadly the firestorm must have been... oh wait, you don't have to imagine, we're getting Firestorm Redux all over the world now, everywhere from Maui to Athens to Alberta.

Mm... and September 1st, 1939, was the day Germany invaded Poland, starting WWII (yeah this is Cayce here sitting on our ass in Tokyo watching Barbenheimer instead of going to Nagoya. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of "Taiyou ni Korosareta." But we digress.)

In an eerie sort of time-loop effect, today, September 1st, 2023, marks the 100-year anniversary of the Kanto Earthquake disaster, which remains the deadliest natural disaster in Japan's history to date. For comparison: it is estimated that slightly fewer than 20,000 people died in the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, 2011. Disaster Prevention Day isn't a national holiday - people go to school and work as usual, but what's special about this day is that schools and workplaces around the country hold disaster safety workshops for students and employees, who are encouraged if not required to attend. Safety workshops include presentations on practical tips to survive a major earthquake, post-quake protocols, and hands-on training such as visiting and interacting with emergency supplies, or even obstacle courses where participants put on masks and learn how to crawl through burning buildings while avoiding smoke, etc. (Fun fact: as a young office drone in Tokyo, Cayce got to attend a very intense version of one of these trainings, complete with fake dry-ice smoke. It was a lot more fun than working in the office!)

How ironic, then, that Buck-Tick's Izora Tour Nagoya show, initially scheduled for June 3rd, 2023 (which was incidentally the night of the full moon, also known as the Strawberry Moon) was rescheduled due to heavy rains and flooding from a massive typhoon that hit central Japan on June 2nd, and not only that, it was rescheduled for September 1st, 2023 (which is incidentally the day after the last Blue Supermoon for the next decade and a bit - Supermoon element relevant in that Supermoons, or perigee full moons, are commonly associated with high seismic activity and fun fact the Great East Japan Earthquake also happened on a Supermoon known as the Death Moon because go figure Death Moon is the traditional name of the March full moon in Virgo fun fact Mr. Sakurai's birthday was also the full moon or Death Moon of March 1966, but we digress) - that is to say, the Izora tour Nagoya show was rescheduled for today, Disaster Prevention Day/Safety Day. The show was rescheduled because the trucks with all the stage sets and sound gear and such have to depart a day in advance of the show when the band are on tour, to ensure that everything can be set up in time, but there was no way any of the tour trucks could have hit the highway in that weather. So the band's management went and rescheduled the show for Safety Day. Maybe they thought it was auspicious, but...

...yesterday evening, it was announced on the Buck-Tick official website that the Izora Nagoya show was being postponed yet again. The official reason? Mr. Sakurai felt sick and tested positive for Covid-19 AGAIN. Here's where it gets weirder, though: last year, as some of you may remember, the band arrived in Nagoya on the evening of August 3rd in preparation for their Fish Tank x Love & Media Portable Members Only 2022 show at Zepp Nagoya, only for Mr. Sakurai to start feeling ill, take a Covid test, and test positive. The August 4th, 2022 show in Nagoya was postponed, along with the August 14th, 2022 show in Fukuoka, and the Fish Tanker's Only 2022 show that had been scheduled for August 11th, 2022 at Toyosu PIT in Tokyo. Mr. Sakurai later reported in FT and on the Buck-Tick official website that he felt extremely ill and had been required to quarantine at a Nagoya hotel for ten days, because due to Covid protocols at the time, he wasn't allowed to return home to convalesce. Later, at the rescheduled Fish Tanker's Only show in Toyosu (which was held on Yutaka's birthday, January 24th, 2023), Sakurai stated "I really thought I was going to die back there." 

However, we all know he's a much tougher bastard than that - in fact, less than a week out of quarantine, he took to the stage at Club Citta' Kawasaki to perform with Buck-Tick at Toll's 60th birthday extravaganza. This was a big deal for a number of reasons. First, the 60th birthday is considered a very important milestone in Japanese culture. A person turning 60 has lived through a full rotation of the Chinese Zodiac: five turns of the twelve zodiac animals (Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar), with one year with each animal in each of the traditional Chinese elements (air, water, fire, wood, and metal). Therefore, the 60th birthday is called 還暦 ("kanreki," or "complete rotation"), and age 60 is seen as a "return to childhood" or "second childhood" in which the person is able to start fresh with a youthful heart in older age. Historically, living to age 60 was considered a great achievement, because in pre-modern times, many people died young of disease, accidents, violence, etc. The 60th birthday is traditionally celebrated with all kinds of festive customs, including eating lucky red rice and dressing the birthday boy/girl in a bright red coat called a "chan-chanko." The color red is used widely because (as adopted from Chinese traditions) it symbolizes good luck, longevity, prosperity, and vitality. In short: there is no way Mr. Sakurai was going to miss performing on Toll's big day! Later, in FT, Mr. Sakurai confessed that he wasn't quite sure he would be up to performing, he didn't feel his performance was up to his usual standards, and he felt very exhausted after the show, but of course, he did it anyway, because he's a tough guy, with a lot of pride, and a great sense of loyalty to the other band members.

Not only that, but one of the many illustrious guests who performed at this show was none other than Issay, vocalist of the band Der Zibet and "very close special friend" of Mr. Sakurai since their indie days late 80's Tokyo. During his later career, Issay was a member of a regular rotating group of musicians in the Tokyo underground/goth scene who often made guest appearances at each other's shows or played jam sessions at events featuring multiple bands. Toll was another high-profile member of this group, and the two had a longstanding working relationship entirely outside of Sakurai and Issay's notorious "friendship," but nonetheless, Issay had never performed as a guest musician at one of Toll's birthday shows since Toll's much-discussed bombshell 50th birthday show (held on August 19th, 2012, also at Club Citta' Kawasaki) that featured a guest live set by Der Zibet in which Issay and Mr. Sakurai performed a reprise of their 1991 duet "Masquerade" (originally released on Der Zibet's album Shishunki II: Downer Side), involving possibly the single most sexually explicit stage routine either of them has ever performed, strip teases included (and we say this in full knowledge and direct personal experience of just how sexual those two can get on stage even when they're up there solo without the benefit of a special friend to get off play off. Also anyone who tries to claim that Mr. Sakurai hasn't ever done a proper strip tease clearly wasn't present at the November 23rd 2011 Utakata no Razzle Dazzle show at Akasaka Blitz, also incidentally a show that was rescheduled due to the Great East Japan Earthquake.) 

However, on August 19th, 2022, Issay took to the Club Citta' Stage again with Mr. Sakurai to perform guest vocals on Buck-Tick's "Itoshi no Rock Star" for the first time in... god only knows how many years. The original Six/Nine studio recording of "Itoshi no Rock Star" (released in 1995) featured Issay singing guest vocals (show of hands: how many of you didn't even realize it because Issay's voice sounds so similar to Sakurai's on this track?). Sakurai later reported that he had written the lyrics of "Itoshi no Rock Star" in Issay's image, just as Issay reported that he had written the lyrics to "Masquerade" in Sakurai's honor years earlier. Issay also appeared as a guest on several dates of the Six/Nine tour, with photographic evidence pointing to a similarly steamy and salacious pas de deux, but no videos of the tour were ever released (even though we know they exist in a secret vault somewhere), so the history of "Itoshi no Rock Star" largely fell through the cracks of the Archives of Buck-Tickistan. While by all accounts, the 2022 reprise of "Itoshi no Rock Star" was a great deal less sexual than the "Masquerade" performance of ten years earlier, it was still a unique moment in Buck-Tick's history, a shivering presentiment of tragedy hidden in the killing effulgence of the August sun: 

"If I turned into a pig, you'd laugh
If I turned into a bug, you'd laugh

If I turned into an ape, you'd laugh
If I turned into a star, you'd laugh"

It was the last time Sakurai and Issay ever performed together. August 11th, 2022 - Sakurai sick with Covid-19 in a hotel room in Nagoya, unable to perform at Toyosu PIT, turns too swiftly toward August 10th, 2023, the day Issay's death was publicly announced. The August 4th, 2022 Nagoya B-T show canceled due to Mr. Sakurai's bout with Covid turns too swiftly toward August 4th, 2023, Issay's last full day on this too blue planet with its too-bright killing sun. (He died August 5th. But he loved the blazing sun and blue ocean of summer better than any other season, and surely he wouldn't have chosen any other day to fly away. Born on July 6th, the eve of Tanabata, gone back to the sky on August 5th, the eve of Hiroshima. Life is art, my friends. All things move toward their end, but nothing is random, of that you can be sure. Die the way you lived, with an abundance of aesthetic style. There is a much greater pattern and design at work than most people allow themselves to see. Don't fear to be a part of it.) 

And now here we are, the second rescheduled Nagoya show in less than two years, and... Atsushi goes and gets Covid again? On Safety Day? Sure, Nagoya is an industrial cultural wasteland of a city, regularly voted "the most hated city in Japan" in opinion polls (not making this up, Google it)... though it has its interesting elements, from the robust South American diaspora to the flourishing doom and gloom subcultures (see: Nagoya-kei) spawned by the reflections of post-modern industrial malaise upon its disaffected youth to the Acchan Ramen Shop, a real place (if it's still in business) whose tagline is "Yappari Kyou mo Acchan" ("Let's have Acchan again tonight!") and whose sign the eponymous Acchan posed in front of during a B-T tour of yore in order to proudly display the photo in his column in FT (if anyone has this on hand, please send, we're too lazy to look it up and photograph it right now). 

But, y'all, what the efffff is UP with Nagoya? There's some kind of Doom Spiral going on down there and it needs to be stopped! We can't let the Black Hole of Nagoya suck down the magic of Buck-Tickistan! So here's my first request of y'all: say some prayers for poor old Nagoya to stop attempting to eat our boys. Nagoya is sad and traumatized but it's expressing its trauma badly and we need to get it help so take off your hats and Safety Dance for Nagoya in hopes that we can stem the spiral before it gets truly out of hand. If Acchan doesn't feel strong enough to attempt a boss battle with Nagoya's Scylla and Charybdis just yet, at least we can help weaken Nagoya's bad juju by firing our Sailor Moon crystal healing powers at the place before he has to go there again for real. All hands on deck! Open your third eyes and send some beams of Cosmic Love down there, because we, Cayce, Grand Tabloid Journalist of Buck-Tickistan, refuse to stand for any more of this behavior from a Japanese city that doesn't even have its own real castle, just a concrete reconstruction of one. Know your place, Nagoya! (Hint: it's not at the cool kids' table.) Being "most hated city" is no mean feat. Eat your karma now, Nagoya! Eat it with your stinky miso cutlets and your stinky automotive plants and your stinky Captain Hook Crocodile vendetta against our Mr. Sakurai! In the name of the Moon, consider yourself punished! (Yeah, Nagoya. I'm Aichi-shaming you. For the capital of a prefecture whose name literally means "knowledge of love" you sure seem ignorant. Sailor Moon was never above a little speechifying dress-down of her antagonists before a fight, and neither are we. Miso cutlets, really? Ewww.)

But, more to the point. Despite having released numerous collaborations, touring together, and doing numerous joint interviews over the years, Sakurai and Issay consistently downplayed their relationship in the media. They were the subject of reams of fan fiction and doujinshi (apropos, considering that Issay actually more or less started his career as a "professional bishounen," entering beauty contests and posing nude for boys' love magazines before he ever really launched as a musician - yes this is true, cross my heart, I'm not making it up for humor value, see JUNE magazine, pronounced Ju-nay, for Jean Genet, notorious queer provocateur author of the seminal gay aesthetic murder suicide novel Our Lady of the Flowers, if you can find barely-legal Issay's nude shoot in this one pat yourself on the back for not only having done better than 99.9% of the aging yaoi fangirls in Japan but also for being twisted enough to f** to possibly underage photos of a dead guy, congrats 2 you U sick fuck, but I digress.) In addition to being chased and stalked by Japanese nutcase fangirls aplenty, the diabolical duo were also the target of a series of frightening stalker fangirls from the Gaijin Internet (yeah, we know who you are. A&I knew it too and guess what, they weren't impressed, fancy that. Crimea cry me a river.) And yet... it seems that the true nature of their relationship remained compartmentalized in fangirl minds as the stuff of early 80's boys' love manga, all subtext and no substance. Which just goes to show how puzzlingly out of touch with sexual reality their fanbase was, despite the fact that both men made their careers out of publicly, unashamedly plumbing the depths of sexuality and sexual psychology, and it was precisely this sexuality that their fans claimed to be drawn to. The longer it went on, the more brazen the joke became. Each one kissing a mask of the other at his show, baring just a little more cleavage here or thigh there, laughing through their teeth at the screaming women attempting to wrestle them bodily off the stage, as if daring them, "What would you have even planned on doing to me, if you actually had me? Do you even know?"

But, real talk here. Because it's 2023 and we can finally real-talk. At this late date, do y'all really still believe that Tokyo's most famous long-haired boys in lipstick and eyeliner, the ones who sang harmony together on "Koi no Hallelujah" and kissed unashamedly in public, even in the eye of the media, were merely playing dress-up in their stepmothers' clothing? Do y'all really think that? Do y'all really think that the guys who wrote songs like "Dance Tengoku" and "Upper Queen" spent all their days in Goldengai without ever stepping a toe into Nichome? (Districts in Shinjuku. Look it up. I can't give everything away.) These are the guys who penned "Masquerade" and "MasQue" respectively, and call me old but I'm pretty sure that back then, Q didn't stand for QAnon. If you don't know what I'm trying to say, go back and listen to Episode 6 of "The Music of Note with Atsushi Sakurai," the part where he talks about going to see Bohemian Rhapsody multiple times in the movie theater and then plays "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen.

If, as you read this, you feel tempted to say, "Cayce, don't be a B," then all I have to say to you friends is, B is the first letter in B-T, and the universe in which Mr. Sakurai and Issay so sensually resided was a "B Universe." Men, women, what does it matter? In a B Universe, it doesn't. L for the Lucy, G for the G-Spot, B for Japanese babies... Q for all the QT B-T fans...

So what's my point here? 

It's this. Just like "special friend" in Everything Everywhere All At Once was for one Chinese laundress to introduce her multiversial hellion of a daughter to the father she feared could never be pleased, "I have Covid-19" is the most ironclad excuse in a wide world of Japanese excuses for a hugely successful professional musician with a slightly punishing sense of personal responsibility to use when he knows that the words "Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest" will fall on deaf ears with the Victor brass because he knows that those guys have definitely never read "Hamlet" and probably never even heard of it (Ophelia who?) The great thing about living in 2023 is that the lockdowns are over and the masks are off and the fans are allowed to cheer at concerts again, but the moment you come down with Covid-19, you're an invincible hikikomori by legal sanction, free to stay in your house with the drapes closed, eat takeout, and grieve in peace because Covid is the Unassailable Bugbear, and therefore Covid is your best friend (not special friend) when you know, despite your continuing tendency towards guilt and self-blame, that you just couldn't possibly get up on a stage in a concrete box in a concrete jungular armpit like Nagoya and sing "Hizumi," much less "Die," much less "Na mo Naki Watashi" before an adoring crowd. So, y'know, god bless Covid-19. Whether Mr. Sakurai actually has it or not at this moment is almost beside the point. It's finally useful for something, after all. Because professional rock stars don't generally get to take mental health days.

In conclusion: I'm calling on all of y'all to please send your best vibes to our Acchan-chan, as loudly and often as you can. He's a very strong person, and deep down, he knows that. He knows his job isn't finished. But he's experiencing choking, overpowering grief, and all the sense of futility and mortal fear it brings. "Why shouldn't I be next?" "My life is almost over anyway" "I'm too old" "Too old to lose it, yet too young to choose it" "Why are there a zillion criminals and abusers out there living as billionaires and yet you're the one who's gone?" "What even is the point anymore?" "What did I actually accomplish in all this time?" "Why..." (and a thousand other bargaining/anger/denial questions). And the "Why can't you just suck it up and move on?" And the "You could have/should have..." (continue with second-guessing here). And the "I'm letting everyone down" (continue with the self-flagellation here). And the "I shouldn't even be here anymore" (continue with the survivor's guilt here). And the (insert all the beautiful, sensual, dizzyingly real memories here).

So please, y'all. Send him your love. Send him your encouragement. Tell him he's enough. That he's loved. That it's not his fault. That there are more tomorrows. The Mothership is waiting patiently, but this field trip is not over. And he doesn't have to eat miso cutlets if he doesn't bloody well want to.

And this... (February, 2021)

Are there any foreign artists you would like to collaborate with ?

ISSAY: All of the artists I would have loved to collaborate with passed away, unfortunately... (laughs). You know what, recently I had a dream, which is a bit embarrassing to share but, the world was coming as one. The borders disappeared. All the countries around the world unified and merged to form one and only country. In order to celebrate this union, an anthem was needed. I don’t know why but David Bowie and myself were chosen to create the song. Isn’t that amazing (laughs) ?!

(From this interview).

Who's going to sing the anthem, eh, Acchan? If not you, then who?

There's no remedy for memory, so we won't say "get well soon." But help us say "You can do it. Mada da yo. Izanae, tabidatou." It ain't over till the fat lady sings and she ain't singing yet and more to the point, you ain't no fat lady!

.

.

This is the End, Beautiful Friend

 Hey, Blog-Tickers.

This is just to say that Issay was a close personal friend of ours for many years and we really, really don't want to talk about it. And we will not be posting anything related to him or Der Zibet in the near future.

Don't expect us to write an article about it, ever.

.

.

.

We still plan on getting back to the blog and the site but our life these days is like a Pac-Man maze of never-ending time sucking bullshit, misery, and now cataclysm, and therefore, we cannot currently predict when we will be back. Sounds like excuses and we wish it were, but it isn't. Thank you for your support in the meantime. We have received a lot of emails from new fans lately - thank you so much, all of you, we appreciate hearing from you, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. 

Mugen Loop ~teaser~

If you are satisfied with machine translation of B-T, that's your choice. You have free will to choose convenience over meaning, and those of us who were trying to create meaning also have free will to die in peace and leave this sick sad world behind and probably be much better off for having given the fuck up already. (Kind of joking about that... probably... it took a lot of effort to grow a whole carbon-based 3D body and we're stingy and don't want to give it up too soon. Oh shit, Cayce, corporeal you say? What's the world coming to? My dears, we're asking the same question.) 

But, in any case we'll tell you here and now that while GPT or Deepl might tell you what the "words" mean, no bot is ever going to tell you what the *song* means. If y'all wanna listen to AI music there's already plenty of it out there, you don't need B-T, go on, run along and play in the soup of "what if Kurt Cobain were still alive" and all that. That's fine. 

But for those of you who still want to listen to what five aging, tough-as-nails, sick-of-this-shit-but-still-here Japanese oyaji have to say about things like this so-called "life"... as a token of our good faith, here's our translation of "Mugen Loop" for y'all, without the kanji, romaji, or notes. Think of this as a trailer. We're working on the rest of Izora, and analysis articles, but it's going to take some more time. We'll publish the rest of the content as soon as we can. Thanks again for your support. As always, the English lyrics are singable in English.

Infinity Loop

Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi

Music: Imai Hisashi

You feel the south winds blow

They're beckoning to you

Full of a sweet perfume

Making you smile

Come, darling dance with me

At the edge of the soft waves

You know, I'd like to try

Stopping time now...

But partway through

My blissful dream-world

A flash then a flash of

Seeing you, dreaming of you

It makes me twitch my nose

Ineffable feeling

And yet then I forget

Every single scene

But still somehow

In my blissful dream-world

A shred then a shred of

Seeing you, dreaming of you

Infinite loop, ooh

The waves on the seashore glow

In the gloaming

Moon rising wet like the dew

Essence of beauty

To love is to become joy

In the gloaming

You flowing wet like the dew

Infinite loop, ooh...

A dream of you

Lulls me in slumber

A flash then a flash of

Seeing you, dreaming of you

Infinite loop, ooh

The waves on the seashore glow

In the gloaming

Moon flowing wet like the dew

Essence of beauty

To love is to be sorrow

In the gloaming

You rising wet like the dew

Infinite loop, ooh...

Infinite loop, ooh...

Forever, I love you

.

.

.

(all photos taken by Cayce Pollard, who retains the copyright to them, whatever that fucking means, eat my cake and have it too, Neuromancer. I always thought you were more interesting than GPT anyway. Would be happy to share some tinned military rations with you in a bunker on a post-apocalyptic beach in Rio if you feel so moved.)

.

Not Greatest Site Not Found

Hi, folks.

It's been a while. We hope you're weathering the AI storm well (and the typhoon, too, if you happen to be in Japan, what a typhoon there is today!). Things are only going to get weirder, so hold onto your data and make sure you have some meatspace gold coins in a treasure chest and analog copies of your important info, just in case.

We have received a number of inquires from y'all in the past few weeks about whether we'll translate the lyrics of Izora. Don't worry! We are currently working on translating Izora, and have already translated many of the songs. However, Izora is an even more complex album than Abracadabra, with many interwoven oblique references, and so this time, unlike in the past, we've decided to do things differently and translate the whole thing before writing the notes and posting each song. We know that y'all come to NGS/Blog-Tick because you want more in-depth analysis and background info, and we would like to give that to you - so please, give us a little more time and stay tuned. We have not, I repeat, have NOT decided to abandon NGS/Blog-Tick.

However...

On May 30th, 2023, Google Sites summarily deleted This is NOT Greatest Site, without warning. This is NOT Greatest Site was powered by Google Classic Sites, which was retired in 2021. We have been considering options on where and how to port This is NOT Greatest Site over to another platform, but it's taken us some time due to the onus of work commitments outside our work for NGS/Blog-Tick. Google Sites previously claimed that websites hosted on Classic Sites would continue to be accessible to visitors, it's just that they couldn't be updated or edited anymore. They gave us no warning that they would delete NGS, and no timeline for when they would do so. The deletion of This is NOT Greatest site was NOT our fault or our intention. We still have all the content of the old NGS, and will do our best to get a new site up and running as soon as we can, but realistically, this is going to take some time, as there are many updates we need to make to the content that's out of date, and we also plan to review and revise translations as necessary.

Furthermore, several posts on Blog-Tick were automatically censored by Google's algorithms for supposedly containing "sensitive content." The posts in question are "Babble of Babel" from November 17th, 2017, and "Thighgate," from January 21st, 2017. You readers who have been following Blog-Tick for a while know that while we are unapologetic in our use of profanity and our discussion of sexual themes, we only use profanity in service of artistic expression, and we only discuss sexual themes in the context of literary and sociocultural analysis. We made a commitment when we launched Blog-Tick to keep all the content of this blog friendly to viewers of all ages. We don't believe that it's inappropriate for "minors" to read discussions of sexual themes - let's be real, how many people under the age of 18 actually have no sexual experience? We're going to bet it's far less than half. 

As for profanity... "fuck" is not only the most versatile word in the English language (or maybe any language currently widely spoken by earthbound human beings), but also, how can hearing some little swearwords actually hurt a child? (Provided the swearwords are spoken in love and devotion, and not in the purpose of shame and child abuse. NGS/Blog-Tick is 200% opposed to child abuse). But, come on, admit it. Children are wild, magical, tough, resilient beings. It's adults who are full of shame and fear, and who love pinning their shame and fear on innocent kids who just want to play in the mud and run around screaming nonsense because it's fun, collect bugs, jump in the leaves, live in the moment. It's the adults who actually need to be looking in the mirror and doing some soul work and figuring out their issues. It's adults who pass on these issues to their kids, but we've got to break free of this Pandora's loop (see the lyrics to B-T's "Bran-New Lover" for more info, oh wait, they deleted our fucking website so you can't. Damn.) Anyway, adults, it's time we all do what we need to do to grow the fuck up. Therapy, meditation, whatever works for you. But we're out of time, the world needs you, stop pearl clutching and hand-wringing, get your shit sorted so you can get down in the trenches and help humanity get our collective shit sorted because hooo boy oh boy is there a lot of shit that needs sorting and the world is not waiting for your selfie.

There are a lot of big discussions going on in the world right now regarding censorship, free speech, and the use of AI and algorithms to enact censorship. The issue is too vast and complex to delve into in this post. To keep things brief, we'll say that in principle, we're opposed to hate speech and other kinds of content that actively hurts or exploits people (kiddie porn, revenge porn, all that good stuff) - but we also believe that censorship is an extremely slippery slope and censorship as it's being wielded by governments and corporations and Big Data in general is bad, bad news. We have no intention of censoring Blog-Tick in order to please algorithms, and we've had it up to here with the way in which Google has screwed us over on this project (i.e. NGS/Blog-Tick).

Therefore, we are planning on leaving Google's services, both for Blog-Tick and for NGS, ideally for a platform that supports independent expression, distributed authority, data privacy, and free speech. We were never tech savvy to begin with, but things are changing at such a dizzying pace these days that if we ever had been keeping up with the changes, we surely aren't able to keep up anymore.

This is where y'all readers can help us out!

First, if any of you have suggestions for blog and site hosting platforms that are more friendly to freedom of expression, please let us know. We're working with a wonderful web designer who's helping us redesign the site, but we're also welcoming suggestions from you readers just to cast a wider net before we make a final decision. We hadn't originally intended to port Blog-Tick to another platform, but now it seems like a necessary step. Those of you with suggestions, please post a comment AND also email us directly at themadaristocrat at gmail.

Second, most web hosting services aren't free to use. Google Classic Sites was entirely free to use, which is one reason why we used the platform for so long. But in order to re-launch the site on a different platform, we are in all likelihood going to need to opt for a paid subscription service - but our budget is very tight at the moment, and quite frankly, we can't afford to do this without your help. Therefore, we would like to ask you all, how much would you be willing to contribute to getting This is NOT Greatest Site up and running again, and keeping it running? We understand that we haven't been posting new content lately, but your financial support will make it easier for us to begin to post content more regularly as we used to do. 

We estimate that the cost of running the site will come to something in the neighborhood of 30,000 yen per year (barring total financial and societal collapse that is lul), hopefully less, but it depends on the service we choose. If y'all are interested in helping out, we'll create a poll to get more detailed data, but for now, please leave a comment and/or send us an email, to let us know whether you would be interested in contributing on a monthly or yearly basis, and how much you would like to contribute. Things are changing so rapidly that we'd like to get at least some rough feedback from y'all before we make our next move. We would like to keep all the content freely accessible to everyone and not use a paid subscription tier system as is so common these days. Why? Because this subscription model is just designed to bilk people out of more and more money anywhere and everywhere, and we want NGS to stay in the spirit of the free and open internet where this site was born and raised. But in order to do that, we'll need to receive contributions from readers, or we may be unable to continue. Thank you all in advance!

.

Also, to add insult to injury, we're dealing with yet another serious crisis in our personal lives. Any positive vibes you could send our way would be much appreciated. Imagine the Great Giant Mantis of Andromeda raining blessings down upon us all! The power of collective intention is strong. We'll be getting the Izora lyrics up as soon as we can.

Thank you all again, from the bottom of our hearts. We couldn't have carried on this project so long without your support. We promise you, This is NOT Greatest Site is NOT dead. Just in suspended animation, getting a DNA upgrade.

.

P.S. If we haven't answered your emails in a while, don't worry, we'll get back to you. It's just that the past few months have been a lot to handle. We're not gonna lie, the deletion of the site was like steaming dog poo on the top of a fresh shit sandwich. We're feeling pretty tapped out at the moment. Send us some rainbows and moonbeams to get us back up again, like Imai's broken leg on those transparent Lucite platform chunk heels.

.

Buck-Tickets

Hey, y'all. We're very sorry we've been so lax with the blogging... our personal life circumstances continue to be very tough and it's been difficult to find the time and energy to update. However, there's something a lot of you have been asking about, that we want to address: namely, tickets to B-T shows.

So, what's up with the tickets?

Now that Japan is finally reopening borders to tourists, a lot of y'all are wanting to come to Japan to see B-T live... and we have some very bad news for you about that, for which we sincerely apologize, though if we had our druthers it wouldn't be this way.

The news is this. Since 2020, Buck-Tick's management have instituted a ticketing system whereby you can only purchase e-tickets via your smartphone. The tickets are non-transferrable, meaning that if you buy a ticket, you can't gift it to anyone else, even if you become unable to attend the show. It goes without saying that the tickets can't be resold, either. This frustrating system was ostensibly introduced to prevent ticket scalping, but ticket scalping was in fact never a major problem with Buck-Tick shows. This reasoning feels a whole lot more like a glib excuse for mass surveillance.

How so? Well, not only do you have to register all your own personal information, but if you buy more than one ticket, you are required to enter the name, birthday, and other info about your plus one. Not only that, but in order to claim your tickets, you are first required to register an account on TixPlus, the extremely dodgy, shitty excremental, incompetent company that currently manages B-T's fanclub and ticketing (blame Victor for this one). You then need to download the TixPlus app - but you also need to download the official Buck-Tick app, because, though TixPlus administrates the ticketing, all B-T concert tickets, whether you get them through Fish Tank (Buck-Tick's official fan club), Love & Media Portable (Buck-Tick's official mobile subscription service) or general sales, I repeat, all Buck-Tickets can only be accessed through the Buck-Tick official app. Last time we checked, this app wasn't available to overseas fans, but if this has changed, please post a comment and let us know.

Once you download those apps, you also have to register a photo of your face on their facial recognition software, because apparently posting really shitty poopy, ugly selfies on a buggy app that doesn't work somehow prevents Covid (!?). Don't ask us why. At the concerts we've attended since this system was instituted, the venue staff have barely glanced at the photos. Oh, and it doesn't help that the facial recognition algorithm is so bad that there's a long line for the tech support booth before every show. The only plus side: the tech support people are the only people in this whole shebang who've actually been professional and helpful.

We don't blame y'all for not knowing this stuff, because the wall of text of disclaimers, rules, etc. that you have to scroll through before even applying to buy a ticket now amounts to at least 20 solid A4 pages in point 12 font. This is not an exaggeration, we actually measured it ourselves. Does anyone read this shit, you ask? Even people fluent in Japanese don't want to read 20 fucking pages of disclaimers just to buy a concert ticket! The disclaimer bullshit horse manure used to be around 1-2 pages, tops! Where did this shit poop come from all of a sudden? Well, kids, we don't have an answer, but we did read through all that garbage, last year, when we first tried to get a ticket under the new system and the app didn't work, and then the facial recognition didn't work... and then at the 35th Anniversary shows at Yokohama Arena the app didn't work again... and we had to stand in line for the tech support booth outside the venue in a rather long line of fans who were in the same fucking copulating pickle. 

Apps: kill them with fire, please. We politely tell them to piss urinate the hell underworld off.

Edit: something one of our lovely commenters brought up that we neglected to mention: if you uninstall and reinstall the Buck-Tick app more than once, you will become unable to use the app. This is supposedly to prevent fraud but seems in practice to be for giving fans headaches, toothaches and buttaches. However, the latest problem we had with the app was solved by a tech support official at the venue uninstalling and reinstalling the app in an official capacity. Basically, you can trust the tech support people (though since we have a Japanese phone we can't vouch for what happens with overseas phones). 

About the delay in two-step verification codes: DO contact Fish Tank and TixPlus about this. You paid for that Fish Tank membership. They owe you. Sure they suck at their jobs, but they are still obligated to fix the issue. In Japanese business, the customer is supposed to be always right.

Anyhow, the real kicker here for overseas fans is that the Japanese ticketing services, Ticket Pia and Lawson Ticket, only allow you to register on their service if you have a Japanese address AND a Japanese mobile phone number starting with the digits 070, 080, or 090. Furthermore, the phone number you register when you buy the tickets is the ONLY phone number through which you can claim your tickets - it's prohibited to buy tickets from a different phone than the one you intend to use at the concert. You have to physically bring your phone to the concert and present your e-ticket as displayed on your phone screen to the venue staff. We made several enquiries with Ticket Pia about this and they confirmed, in a maddeningly obnoxious fashion, that "Ticket Pia is a service only for people in Japan." Yeah, thanks Ticket Pia. Fuck fornicate you very much, too. You racist assholes anal orifices.

However, if you join Fish Tank (for only 6000 yen per year, how cheap that seems now that they raised the price of Buck-Tickets to 10,000 yen or more per show!)... if you join Fish Tank, it's theoretically possible to get tickets even if you're an overseas fan. We're not sure about Love & Media Portable - last time we checked, LMP was only available to fans in Japan (Fuck you very much, too. You racist assholes engage in sexual tacos with your own anal orifice, you discriminatory nationalists) but if anyone here has confirmed that that has changed, please do post a comment. Since we're located in Japan, with a Japanese phone number, we can't actually check ourselves to see if the service works overseas.

Note: if you buy tickets through Fish Tank, you need to write 000-0000-0000 in the Japanese phone number field, and fill in your overseas phone number in the field below.

The bottom line: we wish we could still help you get tickets to concerts, but the new ticketing system has made that pretty much impossible. The only ways you can get B-T tickets now, as an overseas fan, are:

1) Join Fish Tank and get tickets in the fan club lotteries. Is this a money-grubbing strategy by FanPlus to get more people to pay for Fish Tank memberships? You tell us.

2) Get someone in Japan to rent you a Japanese mobile phone to take to the concert, and use their address and the rental phone number to make an account on Ticket Pia to buy tickets through general sales.

3) Wait till you get to Japan to buy the tickets, rent a phone at one of the rental kiosks at Narita Airport, and use the address of your hotel to make a Ticket Pia account. Buck-Tick shows have been seriously undersold since the pandemic - almost none of the tour dates are selling out, and at every show we've attended since 2021, large sections of seats have been cordoned off, unused (what a crying shame! If they'd only issue paper tickets at more affordable prices, maybe they could still fill the venues!) Anyway, it's likely that you would still be able to buy tickets once you get here.

4) Last-ditch measure - go to the venue early and buy same-day tickets. Since the shows are no longer selling out, same-day tickets have been on offer at most shows, and the next kicker here is that the same-day tickets are real paper tickets! (If we could lock whoever designed this system into the old-fashioned Medieval stocks and pelt them with rotten tomatoes, you betcha, we'd do it.)

However, we did a little digging and it seems there are some services available that will let you either create a virtual Japanese phone number, or rent a Japanese SIM card from outside Japan. We're not sure if any of these services will work for this ticketing system, and we can't vouch for their credibility, but if you're very desperate, we encourage you to search around and see what you can find, using keywords such as "rent Japanese phone from overseas" or "get Japanese phone number from overseas." Since we live in Japan, we can't verify that any of these services work, so keep on alert for scams and misinformation and read all the fine print. Getting a phone number won't get you around the address problem, but since none of these services are ever going to send snail mail to you anyway, we offer the trollish suggestion of either registering the address of the hotel where you'll be staying, picking an address at random from Google, or just making something up. We can't be entirely certain of this because we haven't tried it, but we're pretty sure they won't know and they don't care.

Very unfortunately, since Buck-Tick became slaves to The Evil Empire (cough, Victor Entertainment, cough), they have done away with their general enquiries email address. Now, if you want to contact them, you have to do so through the Fish Tank web site, which you can't access unless you join Fish Tank (is that a money grab? You tell us). Those of you who are members of Fish Tank already know that the current Fish Tank web site is a mire of un-navigable gobbledygook and garbage machine translated Engrish, and it's very hard to find the enquiry page, but if you scroll through the help sections, you'll find a link to click on at the bottom, which will send you to an enquiry form. We highly encourage any and all of you to write to Fish Tank and complain about the fact that overseas fans are barred from getting tickets. They have been known to respond to feedback in the past - back in 2017, I encouraged all Blog-Tick readers to write to Fish Tank and ask for Buck-Tick's music to be available for digital download internationally, and within two months, they actually made that happen - they did listen to us! So probably, the best thing you can do is write to them and explain your situation. The customer support from TixPlus/FanPlus is absolutely terrible, but this is all we've got, in this modern world of increasingly crappy feces-covered software updates and separate apps for each of your toenails (too bad the bugs in the app prevent your little toes from logging in! And the app for your big toes painted your toenails orange overnight, without even asking you! But you can't complain, because by agreeing to this Terms of Service agreement, you waive all your civil and human rights forevermore. Fun fact: the German industrial rock band Rammstein have a song called "Buch Dich," which means "bend over" in German. Does that **** in your *** feel good? No? What's wrong with you, we thought you just love yaoi manga! And in yaoi manga, everyone knows that no means yes and yes means more b*tt**x!!!!!11)

You can also consider writing to the B-T members directly and letting them know how sad it makes you that you can't get tickets just because you live overseas. The post-show feedback questionnaires have even been eliminated now, so at this point, anything's worth a shot.

So yes, this situation sucks. We are very sorry. If someone would just tell us us who we could pelt with rotten tomatoes... we'd be on our way there now...

But, in conclusion, we'd like to say the following. This new policy is not, and we repeat, is NOT the fault of the band members. This is a management decision. The band members actually have limited control over these things. In fact, Sakurai has very gently hinted a number of times that he is dissatisfied with how things are going with the management, though of course he can't come out and say it. But Buck-Tick aren't unique in this predicament - since the pandemic, most major label Japanese artists have instituted systems like this. In Buck-Tick's case, this was likely a management decision by TixPlus, which is a shady umbrella company that manages a lot of ticketing services and band fan clubs (very badly. Atrociously. Come at us, TixPlus, we've got a big basket of stinky, moldy tomatoes right here waiting for you.) Buck-Tick switched to having Fish Tank managed by TixPlus after they switched their label back to Victor, so this was also a management decision on the part of Victor. (Rumors of yakuza connections are currently unconfirmed, but it's been the way of the world forever that the relationship between organized crime and the media and entertainment industries is, shall we say... hygge-transcendentally cozy. A laundromat to wash your money in! Who doesn't want one of those!?) 

Anyway, do not assume that the band members are xenophobes or hate foreign fans - all the evidence points to the contrary. The band members have consistently looked visibly pleased by seeing foreign fans in the audience, and before all the pandemic stuff happened, Sakurai had even taken to addressing the crowd in English and Spanish at certain shows. Never fear that the band members hate you! They love you. For any artist, getting fans from around the world to love your work is a dream come true. Furthermore, the band members, Sakurai, Imai, and Hide in particular, have worked with foreign artists on numerous occasions (see Schaft, Schwein, Ai no Wakusei, and dropz). Sakurai still talks about how he loves to travel abroad and how much he loved recording in London. This is not, I repeat NOT, the fault of the band.

Rather, upper management at large, stodgy Japanese companies like Victor tend to be extraordinarily ignorant of how things work in the rest of the world - sometimes it feels like they don't even know there is a rest of the world. These are supremely imbecilic, ignorant people who are making these decisions. Not only can they not manage to build apps that work, the thought that overseas fans might want to attend concerts in Japan has probably literally never crossed their minds - that's the kind of small-minded, self-centered world of the Japanese corporation. I worked with people like this for years in my stint as a Japanese office drone, and talking to most of them was like talking to one of those creepy Japanese Pepper robots most of the time. They don't care about you. They have no idea what your difficulties as a foreigner in Japan might be. They can't even conceive of it. They have no idea what things are like elsewhere in the world. They have zero imagination and little empathy. It's not even that they hate you. They are just, pardon my French, dipshits a la fuckee I ran out of censored swearwords so fine, I'ma just go with fucking dipshits here. 

Anyway, to reiterate, don't blame the band members. They're not the ones betraying you. Instead, if you can, send feedback to these corporate robots. The more of you send feedback, the more likely they'll rethink their asinine system. (Please note that the Japanese postal service prohibits the sending of rotten vegetables from overseas, but if you send us donations, we'll buy extra rotten tomatoes for you).

.

So, I'm sorry. I really don't like to take such a negative tone on Blog-Tick. I want this to be a place where fans can gather and enjoy themselves while learning more about B-T. But... this shit poo-poo is bollocks buttocks. I am so, so sorry that after 35 years, this is what Buck-Tickistan is coming to. Tonight, we're going to go drown the Victor offices in rotten tomatoes, so just wait for us in that shelter. 

I feel sorry for the tomatoes, though. They didn't do anything to deserve this crap.

.

Note: This is NOT Greatest Site is currently frozen due to the updates in the Google Sites platform, and we haven't yet been able to port it to another platform. Until we do so, all information on Blog-Tick posted after 2020 takes precedence over the information on NGS, which is now out of date. We apologize for the inconvenience.

.

Sayonara Shelter

Here it is, the song you just knew was coming - Mr. Sakurai's "I AM VERY ANGRY ABOUT THE WAR IN UKRAINE" song. Honestly, we suspect that there will be more after this one - B-T are currently on tour to support their 35 anniversary best-of album, but in between tour dates, they're also in the studio, recording a new album, which is due to be released in spring of 2023. This song was released on Buck-Tick's 5-disc 35th Anniversary Best album, appearing on the first disc, "Ribelo," which features Toll on the cover. This English translation is singable with the original melody, but as always, we strove to be as faithful to the original Japanese as possible. 

If you appreciate this translation, please consider supporting us on Ko-fi. We know we haven't been posting much lately but your support always means a lot. We've also recently heard from some newly-minted B-T fans from the younger generation... welcome, y'all! Please, don't hesitate to write to us, or to leave a comment, if you feel so moved.

Goodbye Shelter
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Hoshino Hidehiko

Ephemeral candle
In the bunker, dancing and flickering (1)
A lamp with a genie (2)
Flaming in your eyes
Reach out your hand now
You've almost got that love love
At your fingertips
Playing with shadows
Oh my darling princess

Endless rain now
Pretend it's a dream now
And all I want to do is hold you tight
But someone's coming to kill us all... tonight (3)
It's senseless oh, it's senseless, I know

Tonight, I promise that I'll come to meet you
While you're sleeping safe and sound for me
Just wait for me in that shelter

Tonight, the Earth is a like shooting star, so lovely

I want you to bathe in the beauty

Just wait for me in that shelter

A colorless landscape

In a world with no sound, my love song

In trembling soprano

A little girl singing

The rain is so cold now

I wish this were all lies

And all I want to do is hold you tight

But I've got to go off and kill somebody... tonight (3)

It's senseless oh, it's senseless, I know

Tonight, I promise that I'll come to meet you

While you're sleeping safe and sound for me

Just wait for me in that shelter

Tonight, the Earth is a like shooting star, so lovely

I want you to bathe in the beauty

Just wait for me in that shelter

Note: Sakurai stated in Ongaku to Hito and PHY magazines, as well as on his radio program The Music of Note with DJ Chiwaki Mayumi, that he was inspired to write this song after watching the viral video of a little girl Ukrainian girl singing the Ukrainian version of "Let it Go" (from the Disney film Frozen) inside a bomb shelter (it doesn't hurt that she's an excellent singer despite being so young). Sakurai has been an adamantly anti-war activist for his entire career, but he stated that at first, he felt hesitant to write this song, due to the pressure on Japanese musicians to not express political views in an artistic context. However, he stated that he ultimately decided that he's old enough at this point to say exactly what he wants to say, and not worry too much about whether it might make some people uncomfortable. Tanaka, Buck-Tick's long-time album director, encouraged Sakurai to pursue this creative direction, and suggested that, due to its highly topical nature, this song be released with the 35th anniversary best-of box set, rather than waiting to release it on the 2023 new album. You can watch Amelia's video here. In perfect synchronicity, this video was uploaded on March 7th, Mr. Sakurai's birthday.

Sakurai also made reference to the word "shelter" in his song "Barbaric Man," from his side project album I Am Mortal. In both these songs, there is an implicit reference to the Rolling Stones hit "Gimme Shelter," which was partly written in protest of the Vietnam War.

(1) This is a reference to the bunker in which the little girl, Amelia, gave her performance of "Let it Go."

(2) This is a reference to the story "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," a Middle Eastern folktale which is commonly associated with the 1,001 Nights/Arabian Nights tales, but was in fact added at a later date to the 1,001 Nights manuscript. Sakurai has been incorporating Aladdin imagery since the release of the single New World in 2016. Buck-Tick made heavy use of Arabian Nights imagery in the visuals and performance for their Abracadabra tours, as well as in the tag line for the 35th anniversary concerts at Yokohama Arena on September 23rd and 24th, which read, "New World For You." In this sense, "Sayonara Shelter" is a bit like a continuation of "New World," dealing with the same theme of the pain and senselessness of living as a human being in a world that is often violent and uncaring.

(3) Sakurai stated in PHY magazine and his radio program The Music of Note with DJ Chiwaki Mayumi that he included the line "but I've got to go off and kill somebody" in reference to the fact that in many Ukrainian refugee families, the men saw their families to safety, then returned to Ukraine to enlist in the military and defend their homeland. Sakurai has never shied away from assuming a certain responsibility for the violence on planet Earth in which all of us are often complicit. (See Guernica no Yoru for more on this.)

Sayonara Shelter

Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi

Music: Hoshino Hidehiko

Hakanai kyandoru     chikashitsu de dansu dansu     yureteiru

Mahou no rampu     hitomi ni wa honoo

Sono te nobashite     yubisaki de Love Love     ato sukoshi

Kagee asobi     saa ohimesama

Yamanai ame     yume nara ii ne

Anata wo dakishimeteitai kedo

Dareka ga bokura wo koroshi ni     kuru yo

Kurutteiru    kurutteiru yo

Konya     shizuka ni nemuru     anata ni ai ni yuku     kanarazu

Ano sherutaa de matteite

Konya     chikyuu wa marude     utsukushii nagareboshi     kirei da

Ano sherutaa de matteite

Iro wo nakushita     oto mo nai sekai     ai no uta

Furueru koe de     ano ko wa utau

Tsumetai ame     uso nara ii ne

Anata wo dakishimeteitai kedo

Watashi wa dareka wo koroshi ni     iku no

Kurutteiru    kurutteiru yo

Konya     shizuka ni nemuru     anata ni ai ni yuku     kanarazu

Ano sherutaa de matteite

Konya     chikyuu wa marude     utsukushii nagareboshi     kirei da

Ano sherutaa de matteite

Sayonara Shelter
作詞：櫻井敦司
作曲：星野英彦

儚いキャンドル　地下室でダンスダンス　揺れている
魔法のランプ　瞳には炎
その手伸ばして　指先でLoveLove　あと少し
影絵遊び　さあお姫様

止まない雨　夢ならいいね
あなたを抱き締めていたいけど
誰かが僕らを殺しに　来るよ
狂っている　狂っているよ

今夜　静かに眠る　あなたに会いに行く　必ず
あのシェルターで待っていて

今夜　地球はまるで　美しい流れ星　奇麗だ
あのシェルターで待っていて

色を無くした　音もない世界　愛の歌
震える声で　あの子は歌う

冷たい雨　嘘ならいいね
あなたを抱き締めていたいけど
わたしは誰かを殺しに　行くの
狂っている　狂っているよ

今夜　静かに眠る　あなたに会いに行く　必ず
あのシェルターで待っていて

今夜　地球はまるで　美しい流れ星　奇麗だ
あのシェルターで待っていて

Buck-Tick 35th Anniversary @ Yokohama Arena

Amazing shows. Amazing set lists. Lasers all over the place. Insane LED stage effects. An anti-war/goth theme to the songs (hmm wonder who chose that?) Happy 35th anniversary to Buck-Tick! We wish we were able to write a live report, but the whole experience was so overwhelming, the little details are still swimming around in our heads like all those fish in "Aikawarazu no Are no Katamari." In the meantime, enjoy some pictures. With everyone in masks, unable to shout or cheer, was it really a Buck-Tick show? Yeah, it was. But we miss y'all, and we miss the good old days.

Set Lists:

2022-09-23

01. Iconoclasm
02. Babel
03. Uta

04. Gekka Reijin

05. Maimu Maimu

06. Kyouki no Deadheat

07. Kinjirareta Asobi -Adult Children-

08. Aikawarazu no "Are" no Katamari ga Nosabaru Hedo no Soko no Fukidamari

09. Rakuen

10. Revolver

11. Guernica no Yoru

12. Sayonara Shelter

13. Go Go B-T Train

14. Memento Mori

15. New World

encore 1

16. Django!!! -Genwaku no Django-

17. Aku no Hana

18. Illusion

encore 2

19. Koi
20. Yumemiru Uchuu
21. Solaris

.

2022-09-24

01. Elise no Tame ni

02. Babel

03. Tight Rope

04. Mienai Mono wo Miyou to Suru, Gokai Subete Gokai da

05. Moonlight Escape

06. Dance Tengoku

07. BOY septem peccata mortalia

08. Aikawarazu no "Are" no Katamari ga Nosabaru Hedo no Soko no Fukidamari

09. Rakuen

10. Revolver

11. Guernica no Yoru

12. Sayonara Shelter

13. Go Go B-T Train

14. Romance

15. New World

encore 1

16. Angelic Conversation

17. Aku no Hana

18. Heaven

encore 2

19. Boukyaku

20. Yumemiru Uchuu

21. Kodou

Yokohama Arena is Arena as fuck.

All the fans seemed to agree that Cali-Gari's bouquet was the best of the bunch (no pun intended)... but it's rather touching that Hiroshi sent nothing but red roses as a token of his love for Acchan-chan.

Happy 35th anniversary! Mr. Sakurai keeps saying that he can't feel the time passing and he doesn't understand what 35 years even means, and on our part, we tend to concur. Here's hoping for a more open world and many more years of B-T tours to come!