Puffy InRed Cover

Here it is - the January 2009 issue of InRed Magazine.


If I find any pictures from the interior spread, I'll post them too. Most likely, they'll show up at the Sumairu Puffy site once the magazine hits newsstands.

But enough about me...

I'm just curious about a couple things. This will help me tailor my content a little better to what you want. Hopefully the sample size won't be embarrassingly small - please vote if you have a minute! I hope my Japanese readers can understand my poll questions too.

For that last one, I'm sure some of you would love to have an "all of the above" (because I'm just that great at what I do), but it would really be more helpful to me to know what sort of content you're most interested in. Obviously, I will keep doing everything, but if it seems clear that people want more or less of one type of thing, then I'll do more or less of that thing.

Also feel free to leave some comments here on what you like/dislike about the blog, or what you'd like to see in the future.

If you're wondering where this is coming from, there's been a noticeable drop in traffic over the past six months or so and I'm trying to figure out a) how to stop it, and b) whether it's something I'm doing (I hope) or just generally dwindling interest in Puffy (I hope not). I know that over the past six months or so I feel like I've been struggling to find stuff to post about - there's been kind of an extended lull now with only snippets of what would have been minor news in earlier years (like the book release, or a new TV ad).

Anyway, I hope to get some good feedback from this.

Tsukiichi extremely mini review!

So Puffy's got a new book out, a fact you probably know by now.

I, unfortunately, can't read much of it, which makes it a little hard for me to review. It's a collection of essays written for the SMA mobile service - they're really more like blog posts. Mostly trivial stuff, from the sound of it - stories about what the girls do on their days off, what their birthdays are like, etc. It's all written by them, so I'd still be interested to read it if I could, but c'est la vie. One of these days, I'll learn Japanese.

Unfortunately there are not very many pictures, which is disappointing if you're an illiterate like me. There is exactly one two-sided page of color photos. Here it is:



The rest of the book is black and white, including the photos, and they all come from the same photo shoot. Oh well. I'm a sucker for any new photos of them so I'm happy enough for that, but I'm left wanting for more.

The quick verdict is that this book is probably not worth your money if you don't read Japanese.

If anyone would like to post a basic summary of each of the essays somewhere, I'll be glad to link to it here. I only got the gist of a few of them before my translator went to bed for the night :)

Puffy Official Site Refresh

The latest official site update. They seem to be promoting "Tsukiichi" a little more heavily than I would have expected - makes me think that any new music is probably still at least a month away. They really do seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time in the studio lately - it's been at least several months already, by my count. Not to mention the meetings. They've gotta be planning something more than a book signing tour...

Nothing much new to the site besides the homepage, although there are a few earlier things in there that I had missed (an "All Because of You" special, and some tour goods). In fact, many of the sections are coming up broken for me, although they may be fixed by the time you visit.

By the way, I did get the book today. I'll write it up a little later, but honestly, it might be something that most western fans are going to want to pass on. It's pretty text-heavy.

Tsukiichi almost here...

I'm forever impressed by both the fulfillment centers of Japanese online retailers and the speed of EMS shipping. I pretty regularly nowadays receive my stuff from Japan on or even before the release date. That's probably earlier than some of you guys that are actually in Japan!

Anyway, it is probable that I'll get this book tomorrow (really today), and luckily enough, I'm taking the day off. If it does get here tomorrow, I'll post some scans and thoughts within the next 24 hours or so...