Ikimonogakari - Kaeritakunatta Yo

Ikimonogakari will be releasing their next single “Kaeritakunatta Yo” on April 16th. The title song will be featured in the movie Sunadokei, and the b-side “Nokori Kaze” will be featured in a Bleach-related DS game.

The movie Sunadokei will be released on April 26th. I know nothing about it except that it appears to be based on a shoujo manga by Ashihara Hineko that dealswith a love story that delves into the present, past, and future. (Besides, anything titled Sunadokei (hourglass) is destined to be a sobfest.) I’m not familiar with the manga, but it looks to be a bitterly romantic movie.

New NEWS Single - Summer Time

The good thing about CDJapan alerts is you learn about releases before they even get posted on the official site. Anyways. NEWS will be releasing a new single on May 8th.

“New single release from NEWS features a refreshing song about summertime love. Limited edition includes bonus tracks “Liar” and “Summer Time (Original Karaoke)” plus three-sided, six-page jacket with different jacket artwork from the regular edition. Regular edition includes bonus track “Baby! Be My Baby!” not included on the limited edition, plus two-sided, four-page jacket.”

Limited Edition and Regular Edition are up for ordering at CDJapan; I’m sure links at other places are up now.

To do some speculation, “Summer Time” is probably going to be a cheery pop song - I will inevitably like it despite that it’ll probably sound cheesy. Only two B-sides this time apparently; any ideas? I’m going to pin “Liar” as being the mature, dark sounding song. Somehow, I’m curious how how in the world they’ll make a song called “Baby! Be My Baby!” sound good (maybe they won’t), but we’ll see.

This is pretty nice timing for me coinciding with their CD and DVD clearance sale and 500 yen spring coupon - looks like some goodies are going to be coming in the mail in May. (Also, I’ve just joined their affiliate program - so feel free to make any of your CDJapan purchases through my links or through the banner on the sidebar. )

alan’s Chinese blog!

Possibly one of the greatest things I’ve stumbled on in awhile - alan’s Chinese sinaweb blog!

Wait, wait, don’t roll your eyes and press “back” on the browser yet!

The Secret in Arashi’s Pants

Remember hearing about Arashi’s new prime time variety show? The one that will focus on “social and cultural topics” that tokyograph made it sound all serious and stuff?

“Himitsu no Arashi chan” will start airing on TBS in April. They’ve held a press conference for the show. Now, I don’t know if they will be talking about social and cultural topics… but what I do know is, their promotional poster consisted of member’s secrets that you can get… by unzipping their pants.

Sakura Songs of 2008

I can’t think of any other country’s music that’s so fixated on a flower like Japan is with their sakura. Sure, western artists always release songs crooning about roses and daisies, but only in Japan does everyone clamber to release a blatantly sakura-based song in the springtime, or just a spring song - which inadvertently will reference sakura. They don’t even disguise it: at most they’ll use English and say “Cherry” in the song name, but most times they’ll just have “sakura” somewhere in the name or - the most blatant of all - just call the song “Sakura.”

Despite the predictability, I enjoy the yearly rush of sakura-releases. Whether they’re ballads or rock or dance pop, singing about sakura almost mandates an air of wistfulness in the song since it’s the time of graduation and spring romances, and pink petals floating somewhere in the music video. Something about singing about sakura brings out the best of people, and some of my favorites of artists are their sakura songs. My ranking of this year’s are:

NEWS 2008-2009 Calendar

NEWS’ Johnny’s School Calendars this year had an interesting format description: the members will show you a part of themselves… in cans.

What they really should have just said was coasters, really.

Hitched!

TOKIO’s Yamaguchi Tatsuya announced today at TOKIO’S Budokan concert that he has married his long-term girlfriend (former model “A-ko”) and they are expecting a child in the summer. They signed the marriage license in the morning; no wedding ceremony is scheduled.

Congrats to the two of them! It’s not really shocking news, considering that they’ve been together for eight years and have lived together for four, so it’s more like the inevitable happened - the shock is just that another Johnny’s finally got officially hitched. I guess in order to get a marriage approved by Johnny’s Entertainment (who notoriously try to keep their current artists in permanent bachelorhood) what you really need to do is to get your girlfriend knocked up.

YUI - Laugh away

“Laugh away” is YUI’s new song, and is used for Glico CM. It will not be released as a single, but will probably (most likely) appear on her yet untitled album that’s scheduled to drop April 9th.

Leah Dizon - Love Paradox

“Love Paradox” is Leah Dizon’s fourth single; it will be released on March 26th. It features lyrics written by Leah, and will be released on the same day as her new photobook.

If you need some background… Leah Dizon is an American car model with mixed Chinese, Filipino, and French heritages. She was increasingly popular in Japan for her gravure work, moved to Japan to release more gravure works, became a television talento known for cuteness and halting Japanese, and started officially releasing music in 2006.

She’s pretty mediocre in dance and terrible at live singing, which is usually behavior I’d write off as being “idol-singer, not real music” - except her music is shockingly - well, good.

Jero - Umiyuki

Jero’s debut single “Umiyuki” has made huge waves on Japanese music. Real name Jerome White Jr., quarter Japanese and from Pittsburgh, he’s the first African-American enka singer and has the highest ranking enka debut single for a solo artist who hadn’t previously been in a group (catching #4 on the Oricon charts).