Ice Cream

Just two men, eating ice cream cones together.
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Buck-Tick New Year's Greetings, Part 2

Received from a fan at the Budoukan on Sunday.

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This is very cute, but I respectfully submit that it ought to be Imai sleeping on the floor, while Yutaka feeds Mr. Sakurai mikan slices and Toll imbibes box wine.  Ain't no time for box wine like the New Year.  But she got Yutaka's drunk face spot on.

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Buck-Tick New Year's Greeting Cards

It's a tradition in Japan to send New Year's greeting cards.  As with all traditions, some people go overboard with the DIY.  Most especially this B-T fan from Twitter.  I encourage you to take particular note of the illustration of Mr. Sakurai slipping on a banana peel, then crawling out of a cardboard box with a banana peel on his head.  I wish I had thought of this idea first.

The Day in Question 2013

Set List:
01. Steppers -Parade-
02. National Media Boys
03. Candy
04. Django
05. Miu
06. Buster
07. Cream Soda
08. Dress
09. Bran-New Lover
10. Serenade -Itoshi no Umbrella-
11. Hamushi no You ni
12. Suzumebachi
13. My Fuckin' Valentine
14. Rhapsody
15. Kuchizuke
16. Kiss Me Good-Bye

en. 1
17. Elise no Tame ni
18. Makka na Yoru
19. Romance
20. Taiyou ni Korosareta

en. 2
21. Love Parade
22. Fly High
23. Dokudanjou Beauty

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Live report to follow.

Happy New Year, all.

Shopping Service: Holiday Season Shipping Hiatus

An announcement: due to our Christmas vacation, This is NOT Greatest Shopping Service will be taking a hiatus from shipping orders between December 14th and December 29th. This does not mean that we will not be accepting orders between those dates, it simply means we won't be shipping during that time.  If you would like to place an advance reservation order for any of the items currently available on the shopping service page, feel free to contact us at any time, and we will reserve the item for you and ship it to you after the first of the year. We will still be accepting requests for concert tickets and auction items as usual.  To any customers who have previous arrangements with Cayce about the purchase of items, those arrangements still stand, please contact me privately for details.

Also, any customers who wish to request purchase of Day in Question 2013 goods items, feel free to do so.  Some items sell out, so we can't guarantee their availability, but we will be attending the Nippon Budoukan show and we'll do our best to get you what you want.

Calling all Blog-Tickers in San Francisco!

And now, for an unusual announcement.

KAME'S BACK!! (sort of)

For those of you who have been following This is Not Greatest Site since the beginning, you may recall that Kame was the original website designer, or, in hokey 90's terms, the original webmistress.  She quit the webmistress position at the end of 2009, and Cayce has been managing the site largely independently since that time.

Why did Kame quit, you ask?  The short answer is, the Silicon Valley hotshots gave her an offer she couldn't refuse.  Now she's located in the Bay Area, where she occasionally samples Jack Dorsey's curated whiskey collection, among other duties.

Anyhow...currently, Kame is working on some plans for a new j-rock-related project that you will just ooooh so love, and she's interested in meeting up with any Blog-Tick readers who might be in the area. Want to learn all about it? You can talk to her in person this Saturday at Dir en grey's show at the Regency Ballroom.

Can't make it to Dir en grey's show? You really should talk to her anyway. Interested? Contact Cayce, and Cayce will connect you to Kame (like a phone operator, but not.)

Going to the show, but too shy to approach her in person?  Get over it!  She's really friendly!

Look for the small, short-haired blonde wearing a polka dot headscarf and this dress:

and this jacket:

A likely place to spot her will be by the bar, getting sloshed on Franzia. Because that is what classy Californians do.

Actually the Franzia is a lie. We don't even know if they sell Franzia at the Regency Ballroom. Kame will probably be drinking voldka sodas, and complaining about Franzia. Not that it matters.

So yeah. Blondie in a polka dot dress...like Debbie Harry but younger and with more Angelic Pretty and sad to say, probably not quite as cool as Debbie Harry...but, she built this site eight years ago.  Go say hello.  You won't be sorry.

By the way, the cake is also a lie.

Buck-Tick Billboard

Buck-Tick adorably announced that they were once again going to be featured on a billboard outside Tower Records Shibuya.  Since the last time they were featured on such a billboard was before the release of Memento Mori, this is kind of a big deal for them.  Unfortunately, the billboard they're on this time is nowhere near as big as the one they were on then.  For those of you in Tokyo who'd like to check it out, it's in the entryway of Tower Records Shibuya, up in the lefthand corner, and it's kind of overshadowed by JAPAN.

Unfortunately, not this JAPAN.

(And yes, that's Tsuchiya Masami standing to the right of David Sylvian in the above picture.)

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No, unfortunately, it was this Japan.

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That wall is about 5 meters high, by the way.  The Buck-Tick billboard is objectively large, but subjectively small.

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And here's Kuroyume advertising 109 Men's, for good measure.

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