Kanjani8 New Year's concert & Christmas singles release, also the return of Code Blue?

It has been announced that this year Kanjani8 will be at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka for three nights, December 30-January 1st, and so will be having their countdown concert there this year. It looks like they will be doing the same thing they did last year with Kinki Kids for Johnny's Countdown, where they will try to splice the two concerts together.

Also over a three day span, December 23rd-25th, they will be releasing three singles, Gift ~Shiro~, Gift ~Aka~ and Gift ~Midori~. (I kinda like how each represents one of the traditional Christmas colors, with shiro = white, aka = red and midori = green.)

Sanspo.com article. (Japanese only)

I'm kinda sad that this means that NEWS won't be able to perform as a group, as whenever it comes to NEWS and Kanjani8 having conflicting schedules Ryo almost always is with Kanjani8. But at the same time I think I can understand why they are dividing the venues for Countdown, with so many groups participating, some with rather big fan clubs, it makes sense to ease the demand a bit by having one of the groups perform elsewhere. It kinda makes me wonder if eventually Countdown will end up split up between Tokyo and Osaka with multiple groups at each dome. Though it may not need to come to that if some of the groups start breaking up, though I don't see that happening for any of them, outside of Tackey & Tsubasa, but it looks like they'll just become solo artists afterall.

Also some news I don't want to claim as 100% official, though from where it was leaked it looks like it's most likely true, but Code Blue is said to be returning for another season. Of course with no official announcement there isn't much else known at this point other than it will of course be on Fuji TV once more and Yamapi will be a part of the cast.

I guess Yamapi is on a roll right now, with Buzzer Beat being a hit, his solo single and concert and now another drama lined up for him to star in. Hopefully this means that there will be some good news for NEWS soon. Though from the looks of things it'll probably have to wait until 2010 when Kanjani8 has finished doing their activity blitz.

And of course one other thing that has me rather anxious about is that this second season of Code Blue was on a rumor list for winter dramas, and also on that list was Hidarime Tantei EYE. So if the Code Blue prediction was right I'm praying HTEYE's prediction is correct too.