The Tokyo bikers, professors, designers, typographers, voracious readers, writers, printers and translators were (to name but a few) out in full swing last Tuesday for our Goodbye Madame Butterfly Tokyo release event. It was by all means a successful and fun night, made possible by the generous and warm support of all our Tokyo compadres.

I want to say thank you to everyone who showed up and bought books from us, and drinks and food from The Pink Cow. We sold nearly 100 tomes — this was one of our most successful book evenings and we can't tell you how much it helps us to see this kind of support.

As usual, we didn't take any photos (note to self: pay someone to take photos next time) because, well, we never seem to remember to do that. We've managed to collect a small series of blurry images over the years which, when placed in succession, seem to indicate we have been putting on any number of poorly lit, sparsely populated gatherings which may or may not have had anything to do with books and seem more probably connected with bootlegging or snuff film making. So I make this appeal to those of you photographically inclined attendees of the ceremonies last week: if anyone has any photos from the GMB party, please send them to speak AT chinmusicpress.com. Thank You!

We have a couple of wild projects scheduled for 2008 and will hopefully be hosting more of these events. For now, mark January 29th on your calendars. Throw out all plans three days before and after because you're going to need both preparatory time and recovery time for the Hitotoki Tokyo HITOBAN Premiere Literary Reading Extraordinary Bonanza Super. That's right kids, Hitotoki is breaking free of the screen and getting all up in your Tokyo faces.

More on that later! For now, I hope everyone (who isn't employed by a Japanese company at least ... for those of you who are ... I hope your cigarette breaks are long and warm) is well into enjoying their holiday rests. Light up the Bunsen burners, crack open the egg nog, and snuggle up next to your space heater with a well-worn copy of Freakonomics on the Amazon Kindle.

Happy Holidays, and thanks again for everything.