New Release For November

Johnny's has taken no time in announcing the early November releases for their artists. It makes me wonder if their will be more for the month or not.

The first is V6's DVD of their Asia tour which will be released on November 1st. It comes in three editions, two limited with an extra bonus disc with each, and a regular edition.

V6 Asia Tour 2010 in Japan Ready? [Limited Edition <READY? Ver.> / Jacket A] / V6

V6 Asia Tour 2010 in Japan Ready? [Limited Edition <ASIA Ver.> / Jacket B] / V6

V6 Asia Tour 2010 in Japan Ready? [Jacket C] / V6

Then there is NEWS' recently announced single, Fighting Man, which is up for pre-order.

Fighting Man [Regular Edition] / NEWS

Fighting Man [Limited Edition] / NEWS

And then the week after NEWS we get another Arashi single, Hatenai Sora, on November 10th. This single will have the song that will be the theme song for Ninomiya Kazunari's upcoming drama. The RE is more expensive for this than their recent singles have been but it will have two more B-side songs and all four songs on the CD will have karaoke tracks.

Hatenai Sora [Regular Edition] / Arashi

News round-up

Since I have some free time I figured I should do a quick round-up of news pieces here and there from the past week or so.

First up is that Ikuta Toma's Genji Monotagari film has announced more of the cast and he will be joined by fellow agency member, Higashiyama Noriyuki, who will play the man the author of the original tale is based on used for inspiration.

Tokyo Graph article. (English)


Then Koyama Keiichiro will be starring in a play version of the 0 Go Shitsu no Kyaku drama. The play will only have the story that Koyama had a part in but it mentions that they will have Yokoyama Yu reprise his role via pre-recorded video segments during the play.

The play will run from November 13th to December 5th at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and the from December 17th to the 20th at the Sankei Hall Breeze in Osaka.

Tokyo Graph article. (English)


And then there are a couple of SMAP related pieces of news.

First Inagaki Goro will be in the upcoming drama Nagereboshi, which stars Ueto Aya. He will play her brother in the series.

Tokyo Graph article. (English)


And SMAP has gotten a mention in international news. In a BBC news online article about the recent troubles between Japan and China their canceled Shanghai concerts have a mention as one of the many affects this has had between the two nations.

BBC news article. (English)


Finally a little update about how the photo scanning is going along. I do have them all finally scanned so I just have to sort them all into ZIP files and upload them to a downloading site. Hopefully I'll have the time to do this before the week is over.

Fighting Man, NEWS!

It was announced at their concerts that NEWS will be releasing a new single before the end of the year, titled Fighting Man. The single will come out November 3rd, which is also Nishikido Ryo's birthday.

So far it doesn't seem like any of the usual sites have pre-orders open yet but Johnny's net has the listing up with all the information for the single available. Like most NEWS singles it will come with two versions, a LE and a RE. The RE will have four song tracks while the LE will have three and a special karaoke track of the title song. Only the first two songs of each version are the same so the RE has two songs the LE doesn't and the LE has one (not counting the karaoke track). That song on the LE, Wake Up, is listed to be a sequel song of Fly Again off of the groups album color.

I have to say I'm surprised to see a single for NEWS already. I did not expect them to release anything else this year after their album, LIVE. Especially since it looks like Kanjani8 will be quite active for the rest of the year. But at the same time I'm glad to be getting so much after so little from last year and I hope the pre-orders for the single open up soon.

Yamaguchi welcomes second child

Tokio's Yamaguchi Tatsuya has become a father for the second time to a second son on the 17th of this month. He even worked his schedule so he could be present for the birth.

His first son was born about two years ago shortly after his marriage to his wife.

Tokyograph article.

I have to say that it was rather sweet of him to make sure he could be there for the delivery. And his sons probably have some of the best 'uncles'.

Kanjani8 new album and movie

Big news for Kanjani8. Not only are they releasing a new album next month on October 20th, but the album will come with a movie starring the full group.

The LEs of their past two singles had the Prologue of Patch which were music videos connected to the movie. And with the LEs of the album you can get the movie, the regular edition will come with an extra CD disc with the solo songs of the members as well as a group song not on the LEs.

8UPPERS [Regular Edition] / KANJANI8

8UPPERS [w/ DVD, Limited Edition] / KANJANI8

8UPPERS [w/ 2DVD, Limited Edition] / KANJANI8

A quick blog/personal update.

As I'm sure the followers of this blog have noticed I haven't been posting much of late. Honestly a lot has come up in RL and I just have not had much time for blogging at all. I've been trying to stay up on the news with some success though.

By the end of the month things should calm down again for me and I'll be back to blogging like usual. To try to make up for not posting much I am working on finishing scanning all my shop photos. I just have about 50 left so I'll try to finish that by the end of the week so I can have those up for people to download.

So thank you for your patience, especially for those who are following this blog.

Full cast of Freeter, Ie wo Kau revealed

Ninomiya Kazunari's upcoming drama, Freeter, Ie wo Kau has put up the full cast list and Nino will have two other Johnny's as a part of his supporting cast. Maruyama Ryuuhei from Kanjani8 and Yokoo Wataru from Kis-My-Ft2.

Fuji TV official website. (Japanese only)

As a big Kis-My-Ft2 fan I'm really happy and excited to see Yokoo making his drama debut. Especially since dramas with leads from Arashi tend to get good ratings so hopefully he'll get a bit of a popularity boost from this, as well as maybe draw in some new fans for Kis-My-Ft2.

I don't have a lot of time right now but I think I may try to watch this drama now for Yokoo too, as he is one of my favorite members of the group.

NYC New Single

Have to say I'm quite surprised to see this in my inbox but cdjapan just sent out a notice that NYC will be releasing a new single on October 20th titled Yoku Asobi Yoku Manabe.

There will be two editions for the single. The Regular Edition will have three tracks with karaoke tracks for all three songs. The Limited Edition will only have two tracks and a DVD with the PV for the title track.

Yoku Asobi Yoku Manabe [Regular Edition] / NYC

Yoku Asobi Yoku Manabe [Limited Edition] / NYC

I have to say I'm kinda surprised to see NYC releasing a single, though I feel much better about it now that Hey! Say! JUMP have released their first album. Of course I think with this release it means that the unit is going to remain as a trio. I now wonder if they will have Nakayama Yuma debut again in the future with another group though seeing as he's still being considered a Junior. But I guess time will tell about that.