Professor Morimoto, the younger

Well it looks like Morimoto Shintarou is going to continue to be busier than his older brother as it has been announced that he will be a regular in a new variety program, Ocha no Mizu Hakase. The program will air on TBS starting on November 17th at 7:55PM and will air every Tuesday after. And while it is a variety program it promises to have an educational slant by having its regulars act as professors as they go on location to learn about new things.

In the Mainichi article it mentions that one of the adult regulars mentions he has a son about MoriShin's age and that he hopes to ask Johnny if they could get Morimoto Ryutarou on the program as well as a guest.

Mainichi article. (Japanese only)

I'm actually rather happy to know that they sound like they will try to get Ryutarou on the program as well, even if it's only as a guest. But as he really has done so little lately I think it would be nice if he could do something like this ever once and a while.

2/3 of NEWS to be a part of a variety show

It was recently announced that 2/3rds of NEWS, Koyama Keiichirou, Kato Shigeaki, Masuda Takahisa and Tegoshi Yuya will have a regular segoment on a new variety program titled Soukon. Their segment will feature them having to do various running goals and they will also be planting trees as they earn points from these goals as a part of Lawson's green project.

Yomiuri online article. (Japanese only)

As a NEWS fan I'm pretty excited about this, even though I'm not sure how interesting it will be to see these four run every week. But I guess if they change things up enough it could be interesting. And in one of the articles about the program Shige mentions that he would like to run a big marathon, so it would be interesting to see if they can reach that goal, as marathons are something you need to train hard for. I guess we don't have to worry much about these four not being in shape for a while.