KAT-TUN 2 Me

So…. guess who, according to Oricon, has the number 1, 2, 3, and 4 best selling single this year?

Arashi of course!!! Can you believe it? EVERY SINGLE ARASHI RELEASED THIS YEAR SOLD BETTER THAN ANY SINGLE RELEASED BY ANYONE ELSE. Ya know, I thought they had hit a peak last year, but things just keep going up and up for them.

I’m curious to know where KAT-TUN’s songs ranked. Probably in the top 10, but the whole list hasn’t been released yet. It was just an article about Arashi’s success. Also on the KAT-TUN side of things, well, not much has been going on with the group lately, has it. Two singles in quick succession at the beginning of the year (which was great) and then…nothing. I mean, there’s a lot of Jin stuff right now what with the movie and solo debut song, but not a lot of KT stuff. I’m hoping that will change soon. Not that I don’t love Jin, but all this solo stuff makes me nervous. This isn’t a sign that he’s getting ready to quit the group is it?

Anyway, when I told some of my classes that I went to their concert on Sunday, my students were insanely jealous. Like, half of the girls class got out of their seats in the middle of class and ran up to me to press me for information.

When I go back to this blog, I go back with a vengeance, don’t I?

~Celestia~

The Oricon chart for the first half year’s single sales is up. Here’s the top 10.

**1位 : 64.6万枚 … 嵐/矢野健太 starring Satoshi Ohno「Believe/曇りのち、快晴」
**2位 : 55.6万枚 … 嵐「明日の記憶/Crazy Moon~キミ・ハ・ムテキ~」
**3位 : 45.2万枚 … 秋元順子「愛のままで…」
**4位 : 37.7万枚 … KAT-TUN「RESCUE」
**5位 : 35.0万枚 … 遊助「ひまわり」
**6位 : 33.1万枚 … KAT-TUN「ONE DROP」
**7位 : 27.6万枚 … NEWS「恋のABO」
**8位 : 25.3万枚 … EXILE「THE MONSTER ~Someday~」
**9位 : 23.1万枚 … 羞恥心「弱虫サンタ」
*10位 : 21.1万枚 … KinKi Kids「約束」

Over half of the top 10 belongs to Johnny’s! Congratulations! Even more fantastic, both #1 and #2 are going to Arashi (and Crazy Moon is still currently charting in the weekly top 10). I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they managed to repeat their 1-2 finish from 2008 on the 2009 yearly chart as well. KAT-TUN is holding a very respectable 4th and 6th place. Also, we have NewS at 7th, and Kinki Kids at 10th.

~Celestia~

Fresh off the website, Arashi’s latest single has sold 230,022 copies in the first day!

Hooray! That’s even better than “Believe” (the best selling single in Japan so far this year) did on its first day even though I think Believe is a better song

I’m quite happy to see that Arashi’s steady rise in popularity seems to still be continuing. Maybe I’ll write about the PVs for this one later.

~Celestia~

More on “Believe”.

The total sales for the first 3 days of charting are now at 397,001 copies, which means that “Believe” is now the top selling single so far for 2009….WITH ONLY 3 DAYS OF SALES! Fantastic!

~Celestia~

OMG OMG OMG! Take a look at the sales numbers for the first day of Arashi’s “Believe”.

214,618 COPIES IN THE FIRST DAY!!!

The first day! I mean, I knew this song would have good sales. It comes at a time when Arashi is extremely popular, more so than they’ve ever been, and the song is damn good. It’s been getting a huge positive response from both inside and outside the fan community, but posting those kind of numbers on the first day is unheard of. I mean, KAT-TUN set a record when DUES had a first day index number of 104,864 about (180,000 copies) and this 30,000 more than that!

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict right now that this single will sell over a million copies before its chart run is over.

As long as I’m on the subject of Arashi, I had an interesting conversation about them today with my 5th graders. I swear, I didn’t start it! One of the girls, a Johnny’s fan, brought it up. So, our Arashi focus group today consists of 6 elementary school 5th graders (11 year olds), two boys and four girls, and occurred over lunch. Conveniently, ten interesting points emerged.

1: Every single kid there knew the names of all members of Arashi, dramas/movies they had appeared in, and had an opinion as to who they liked and who they didn’t, including the boys.

2: Ohno Satoshi was surprisingly popular. In fact, two of the girls and one of the boys cited him as their favorite, and another girls said he was her 2nd favorite. That kind of surprised me, but it seems to mostly be attributed to his recent dramas. “Uta no Oniisan” was a favorite with the girls, and the boy thought “Maou” was really cool.

3: On a similar tangent, dramas/movies the guys have been in were a major factor in how much the kids liked each individual guy.  One girl, a Nino fan, had a Ryuusei no Kizuna planner. I think with kids, most of Arashi’s variety shows are on too late at night for them to watch, so they probably get to know who’s who on an individual level more based on the dramas. The songs seemed to be the biggest factor in how much they liked them as a group though.

4: Sho was also very popular with the kids, probably second after Ohno overall, and appealing to both the boys and the girls.

5: Nino would probably have ranked in 3rd.

6: Two of the girls and one of the boys really disliked Aiba. They said he was weird…the other boy said he was his favorite though

7: One of the girls also had a rather intense hatred of Matsujun. She said he was “kimoi” (disgusting). None of the other kids shared that feeling though, so I’ll consider her an outlier.

8: The kids actually got into it enough that they were passionately arguing about who in Arashi was the best. The poor Aiba-loving kid was helplessly outnumbered by the Ohno fans, but he fought hard!

9: When asked about which songs they liked (they asked me first!), a lot of the most recent songs came up, unsurprisingly considering the kids age. I mean, they can’t have been interested in music for that long. A couple of them mentioned A.Ra.Shi though, which did surprise me. I mean, they were about 1 year old when that song came out!

10: As far as other groups, discussed briefly, one girl liked KAT-TUN, two liked Hey!Say!Jump (again, not surprising considering their age), and one girl and the boys didn’t really have an interest in any other Johnny’s groups.

I hope we’ve all learned something here. I feel like I ought to take some surveys or something. Form more accidental focus groups. Make some graphs!!

~Celestia~

I’ve been keeping track of some of the weirder searches that have lead people to this blog, and I think they’ve accumulated enough for me to share them with you! These are all real search terms that someone out there has typed in and somehow been lead to my site. My commentary in purple, search terms in bold.

“Skinny Shirtless Boys”- Okay, a little unusual, but I can understand why you’d expect to find that here.

“Is KAT-TUN still there?”- Why yes, yes they are… I always find it funny when people type full questions into their search engine.

“Arashi are girly girls”- Why, yes, yes they are… ROFL!

“KAT-TUN Queen of the Damned Concert”- I believe what you were looking there is “KAT-TUN Queen of pirates concert” PIRATES, though a KAT-TUN concert based on a cheesy vampire movie could be interesting too.

“Broad weekly”- Huh? How in the world did that lead you to a KAT-TUN blog, and what were you actually searching for anyway?

“Jin is watching Kame”- He is????

“Free download of weeeeek by KAT-TUN”- Oh no. NewS is going to be pissed when they find out that KAT-TUN stole their song.

“Exile fanfiction. Takahiro”- Another “How the hell did that lead you to this site??” Have I ever even mentioned Exile here? I don’t think so…

“2 girls attacking each others crotches”- (O_o)

And to finish off with a couple news blurbs.

-Arashi around Asia 2008 DVD to be released March 25th! Horray! Concert DVDs are my very favoritest thing about my Johnny’s fandoms..except for actual concerts I suppose. Please have some more before I leave Arashi!

-”One Drop”s first week sales are 281,359, which isn’t their best, but better than “White X-mas”, better than most Johnny’s groups, and hella better than most any other Japanese music group. Of course they debuted at #1, sealing 9 straight #1 singles for them. Congrats!

-On their Music Station performance this week, KAT-TUN had Jrs as background dancers, and Koki let his little brother Juri do his rapping part. How freakin’ cute is that?!

Happy Beleated Valentines,

~Celestia~

Today after work, I stopped by a book store and purchased the October issue of Myojo. I was debating whether or not to do it up until the very end, because that’s the magazine that brought us Jin demonstrating his poor decision-making skills with regards to his hair. However, I have decided to graciously look past that, because KAT-TUN’s section is just full of super duper cute pictures of Kame. Look!

“Hmmm. Did I leave the oven on?”

Close up. I don’t know why, but I kind of love how he usually paints just a few of his fingernails black.

So pretty in profile.

LOL! My favorite of the bunch

I went ahead and replaced poodle-hair Jin with an actual poodle. I can’t have anything distracting me from shy Kame in the corner there.

BTW. Kamenashi has also been named “Best Jeansist” for the 2nd year in a row. I guess having a feminine waistline and a preference for going comando is good for something other than inspiring pervy fanfiction.

Last ones. These are clearly not from this month’s Myojo, but they are some of the cutest pics I’ve ever seen of baby Junior Kame.

What a little Cutie-Pants!

~Celestia~

PS. Quick Arashi note. Truth/Kaze has sold 63,535 copies in its second week, bringing the total total to 530,823 copies sold, as reported by Oricon. 500K+! Awesome. The single is now sitting pretty as the top seller in Japan for 2008 so far.

Got these from HERE

Apologies for the pic. snatching, but these had to be shared with more of the world immediately.

They’re from the QOP tour. Jinnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Why didn’t you take off your shirt at the concert I went to? Oh well. We’re lucky to get such pictures at all since Jin seems to be the KAT-TUN member least inclined to remove his clothing in the middle of a concert.

Oh but he has a nice body these days, doesn’t he? Toned, but not stick-skinny like many of the other Johnny’s boys. Manly!

Sweet Dreams =p

~Celestia~

PS: “Truth/Kaze no Mukou e” has sold an amazing 467,288 copies in it’s first week, falling neatly behind Arashi’s own “One Love” to become the current 2nd best selling single of 2008 in Japan and posting the highest first week sales of any single of 2008 thus far as well. Let me repeat, 2nd best selling single of the year after only one week of sales. Today is officially awesome.

I wish I could bake Arashi a cake. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I still think the majority of them are far too skinny (Nino/Jun..I’m looking at you and keeping a close eye on Ohno while I’m at it). The second is because some serious congratulations are in order. In the last couple of years their popularity has increased A LOT, and they’ve all been running around like crazy little bunnies to help make that happen. I’m really hoping that they don’t release any more singles this year so they can reduce their work schedule from “Inhumane” to merely “Exhausting”, but that’s another story.

What I do want talk about is their most recent achievement: “One Love” has become the current top selling Japanese single of 2008. There’s no guarantees it will stay that way, of course, but that’s still damn impressive. Yesterday they released a new single (despite “One Love” remaining in the top 10 on the charts), and the index numbers for the first two days have been fabulous. 119,227 for day 1 and 66,067 for day 2, both higher than the numbers for those days of any Johnny’s single released so far this year. Maybe even the highest for any single, but I don’t have the numbers to back that up, so don’t quote me on that one.

Anyway, that’s an estimated 324,265 copies sold in two days. Two days! It’s extremely rare for a song to break the 300,000 mark in two weeks, much less two days.

KAT-TUN quiz coming next time. I’m working on it.

Toodloo,

~Celestia~

PS. Nino totally stripped Ohno’s shirt off of him during the last Arashi no Shukudai-kun. Evidence:

That’s all on the Ohmiya report for today.

Just so ya’ know, I leave for Japan tomorrow, which means you can’t expect any real updates from me for a little while. I haven’t been writing much lately because I’ve been busy preparing, and I don’t plan of getting back to blogging until I’m settled in Japan. Don’t worry! I am not abandoning this blog at all, and I’ll be back just as soon as I have a chance.

Before I go, this just in: “One Love” sales have surpassed “A Day in Our Life” to make it Arashi’s current 4th best seller, and that’s with only 3 weeks of charting! Continued sales have been very strong, and with 392,976 copies reported by Oricon so far, I would be shocked if it didn’t surpass “Sunrise Nippon” to take the number 3 spot. Yay for Arashi’s surging popularity!!

See you on the other side,

~Celestia~