As Monday, October 10 is Health & Sports Day in Japan, a national holiday, we will be getting out of the office and doing something…healthy and sporty. So there will be slight shipping delays on items ordered over the three-day weekend.
You can find a list of all the Japanese national holidays on our main site, Japan Zone.
Stylist Kikuchi Yamato (30), who is married to model-singer Tsuchiya Anna (27), was arrested last week and charged with assaulting several people and damaging property while drunk. He is accused of kicking and breaking the reception counter at a karaoke parlor in the central Tokyo entertainment district of Roppongi, where he had been drinking with several friends until around 11:30 p.m. on September 29. According to an NTV report, when a parlor employee tried to intervene, Kikuchi assaulted him and grabbed him by the throat. When police from the Azabu station turned up, Kikuchi allegedly resisted and pulled an officer’s uniform. He was quoted as telling police that he was drunk and doesn’t remember anything about the incident. Tsuchiya, though probably not too fazed by the whole thing as she is known to be something of a wild child herself, apologized a couple of days after the arrest on a Tokyo FM radio show.
Kikuchi is a stylist for many musicians and talento. His romance with Tsuchiya was first revealed in September 2009, when she also posted on her blog that she was pregnant with his child. Their son was born in March 2010 and Tsuchiya also has an older boy from her previous marriage.
Korean pop artists, continue to find chart success in Japan, while also continuing their obsession with capitalized group names. For the first in the history of Oricon’s chart rankings, K-pop has topped both the singles and album charts at the same time. And girl group T-ARA are also the first overseas artists to get to No.1 on the singles chart with their debut release. Their single “Bo Peep Bo Peep” marked their Japan debut on September 28 and was an instant hit, partly thanks to the cutesy “Neko Dance” that accompanies it (see video below).
Meanwhile, established stars Toho Shinki have seen their latest album “Tone” reach the top of the album chart, their second chart topping album of the year. K-pop artists now have a total of nine No.1 releases between them in Japan this year, the most ever. Others include singles from Toho Shinki, girl group KARA and actor/singer Jang Keun Suk, and albums from BIGBANG, FTISLAND, 2NE1, and Shojo Jidai.
