Actress and singer Aragaki Yui (21) made a surprise visit at a senior high-school in Sagamihara, Kanagawa on Wednesday. In the name of happiness, she gave the school a "Happiness Hug-Tree Flowerpot". With this event she wanted to promote her 2nd album called "hug" and all the students went crazy when they saw her up on their stage. "I missed the whole athmosphere of a school," she said with a really bright smile and wished them all a lot of happiness.

Everyone gathered in the gymnasium. Silence. Then they all suddenly see the smiling face of Gakky and the silence gets crushed by the cheers. She planned this event together with the help of Tokyo FM's SCHOOL OF LOCK where she works as a regular. SOL vice principle Yashiro went on stage together with her. "Gakky desu, yay! You'll get a lot of luck, if you are hugging here." She proclaimed on stage and with her she had a signed CD for everyone.

In her radio show of SOL, she's the head of the "Rumor Club" and searches for a lot of urban legends. On her new album there's a motif of a bear and it was the first time that she designed the jacket herself. The same bears have been made into a tree flowerpot that she brought with her on stage. "You'll experience a lot of luck, if you embrace each other in front of this tree." She propagated. The flowerpot has been given to 20 schools in the whole country.

Within her show, she also asked people to send in their "Happiness-Hug Pictures". After looking through all of them, the first place went to someone from this high school and that's the actual reason why she particularly came to visit this one. The winner gets to do a "Gakky Call" and you could feel the tension among the 620 students.

A 3rd grader was the lucky girl who had the chance to go on stage and get embraced by Gakky herself. A few more students had the chance to get on stage and one male student even confessed to her with the words "I love you!", but of course you can't win her over just like that and so she smiled him away with a bitter smile.


On the 11th she had her 21st birthday and on this day she really felt like an older sister. She revealed one of her personal and bittersweet youth stories. "It was a lot of fun and I had a broad grin on my face, but as soon as I was about to go on a stage, I had a strange feeling in my stomach. Somebody (from the staff) hugged me and I immediately got happy again."

The flowerpot will be placed in the practice room of that school. "I also used a good luck charm during junior high-school in order to sit right next to the person I liked. I took the joker from a cards game, wrapped it in red paper and put it in my breast pocket. I was really surprised when we were drawing the lots in order to arrange the seats." Gakky remembered and celebrated the new "spot of happiness" at this school.

Yesterday (18th) she will also have another show on SOL and she's going to contact another senior high-school student with a lot of luck. One thing is for sure, the students of that school are definitely going to forever keep her smile as a symbol of happiness in their hearts.


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Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com
Source: Sanspo
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Actress Fukuda Saki (18) is going to make her comeback as a singer after concentrating on her acting career only for more than 2 years. Hew new song is called "Ashita He no Hikari" ("Light for Tomorrow" or something like that) and will go on sale on August 12. Further it's also going to be used as the background music for climax scenes in the TV Asahi dorama "Maid Deka" (Maid Detective; starting on the 26th this month) starring Fukuda herself.

In 2005 she started her singing career with the help of THE ALFEE's Takamizawa Toshihiko as her producer. On March the year before last, she released her last single and decided to put all her energy into her acting career. Along with her change to the record label EMI, she underwent a change of attitude. The song is going to have an 80's vibe to it, together with a more adult-like singing. "I'd like to do music that reflects my personality more than it did before and convey those feelings to a lot of people."

"Maid Deka" seems to be supported by some really great music. The theme song is going to be sung by the female college student and populer singer JYONGRI (20). It's the first time she's doing a theme for a dorama and wrote the song "Muteki na Ai" (Invincible Love) after reading the story. For Fukuda it also was her first time writing the lyrics herself, "Every single word of the lyrics is a peace of me."

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Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com
Source: Sanspo
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Young and beautiful talent Natsumi Elena (14) has been appointed as the first supporter girl for the "Senko Riot 2009" teenage lock festival that will happen at Tokyo Big Sight on August 8. That rock festival is powered by Tokyo FM's SCHOOL OF LOCK! and features several teenage rock bands that made it through nationwide preliminaries. Last year's festival was a huge success and so they decided to repeat it this year again and this time even with the help of an image girl.

Right now Natsumi herself is an exclusive model for the popular magazine "Hana★chu→" and also already had several appearances in doramas and commercials. She can definitely be described as one of the very promising young actresses in the industry.

Her appointment as the image girl for a rock festival didn't just happen by chance. Natsumi is really big rock fan and even already appeared in a rock commercial. She seems very mature, even though she's still just a junior high school student. When she has some time off from work, she often goes to summer festival or other typical places to listen to some live music. Her love and knowledge about music reaches from major to independent artists and she really doesn't have to hide from people who work in the music industry. Moreover she even has experience with playing the guitar, the bass and the drums. Natsumi simply is a little "Lock Girl"!

"I'm really happy to be able to participate in Senko Riot! I'll put in all my energy!" She's going to appear on posters that will be hung up in schools and metro stations all over the country and also make PR for it in magazines and so on. "While talking with everyone about the festival, my job will be to enthusiastically showcase the power of the teenage generation."

Two months ago I already wrote about Ueto's upcoming 16th single called "Smile for...". Since then it also got already announced that she's planning to bring a new album sometime this year and today they finally released some more details. The new album is going to be called "Happy Magic ~Smile Project~" and will get released on July 15th.

It's been 2 years since the single "Namida no Niji" and her announcement to take a break from her music career. She debuted with the song "Pureness" back in 2002 and since then her music career spawned 15 singles and 4 albums. The reason for the break was to focus more on her acting career, but since then her fans didn't stop flooding her record company and agency with wishes for her to resume singing. Backed by those wishes, Ueto secretly started to work on a very big project.

When speaking of Ueto Aya, there's only one thing that comes to mind first, her smile as bright as the sun. Thus they named it the "Smile Project 2009" and repeatedly started to have meetings since last summer. This year she then started working on her concept album and personally started to ask several musicians to write songs for her.

She got together an amazing bunch of talented songwriters to help her with the album. Tortoise Matsumoto of guitar group Ulfus, Hirose Koumi, RYOUJI of the group Ketsumeishi, Kiroro, Yaita Hitomi, BEGIN and Tokita Shintaro of Sukima Switch are on board. Ueto is said to have received a letter of encouragement for the recording from Hirosue and Yaita even let her to contribute her own thoughts to the lyrics.

The upcoming single is going to be a double A-side single, containing the songs "Smile for...", written and composed by Hirose, as well as "Mou Ichido Dake" written and composed by RYOUJI. The release date for the single got delayed a bit and will now come out on June 24th.

"After a long time I'm finally doing some music again and moreover with the very clear theme, 'Smile!'. The album will completely go a long with the theme. You will be able to listen to it every day and it will boost up your spirit. I myself would give it full 100 points. Please give it 100 points, too. *laughs* "

Recession and hysteria about that new flu, maybe Ueto's voice will really be able to cheer up the Japanese a bit.

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Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com
Source: Sanspo
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Actress/singer Aragaki Yui (20) and her junior from the same agency, Kawashima Umika (15) will appear together in Aragaki's new music video. It will be the music video for Aragaki's new song called "Utsurushi E" that goes on sale on the 27th. That song is also being used as the background music for the dorama "Aishiteru" with Kawashima as part of the cast.

In the music video they'll appear as if there are real sister and get on a rowing boat together. During the interview Aragaki hugged Kawashima from behind and kindly embraced her with both of her arms, an image just like sisters. "I remember how I moved to Tokyo, when I was around the same age Umika-chan is now. She's so good at conversations and isn't her natural brightness refreshing?" Aragaki about her cute younger sister's charms.

The song matches with the theme of the dorama about families and how they should be. "Everyone had a rebellious age, a time when you simply didn't want to be obedient. With the help of this song, I've recenly sent my mother a message and said sorry for all the trouble I caused her back then during that time. Now I'd like to use this song to tell the people to do the same thing." She explained.

Kawashima listened to all of her thoughts while sitting next to her and has been clearly impressed. "Gakky-san is amazing!" In high spirits she added, "I'll do my best in order not to loose against Gakky-san's heart-warming smile as well!"

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Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com
Source: Sponichi
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Yesterday it's been announced that actress Ueto Aya is going to release her 16th single after a 2 years long break from her music career.

Her new song is called "Smile for..." and will be used as the new ending theme for the ongoing TV Tokyo anime series called "Katekyo Hitman REBORN!" as of April 4th. It's been 2 years since Ueto's last single called "Namida no Niji/Save me". Singer and songwriter Hirosue Koumi has been in charge for the lyrics and the composition of her new song, his first work for Ueto.

"Smile for..." is going to get released on June 3rd and next to the regular edition, there will be a limited edition that comes with a DVD and a REBORN! edition. No further details on how actively she will resume her music career in the future.

Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com / Source: Oricon, OscarPro
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It's been announced that director Momose Yoshiyuki is going to make the music video for Aragaki Yui's new song "piece" that is going to get released on the 25th. There will also be 3 different jackets available for the CD, one drawn by Aragaki herself, one made by Momose and one with a photograph of Aragaki. She's going to aim for the 1st rank in the Oricon charts with that special Ghibli tag for her song.

It was around May 2008, when they started talking about a collaboration. Aragaki narrated a music show on NHK where several artists sang popular songs from Disney and Ghibli movies. After that, Ghibli started to call her and they exchanged ideas. By November it was Ghibli who offered to create a music video for her song "piece".

Momose Yoshiyuki already worked together anime creator legend Miyazaki Hayao and directed "Ghiblies episode 2". He has also already shown his creativity in music videos of Nakata Yasutaka's unit "capsule." Aragaki was surprised that he already has a theme for the video in his head right after listening to the song for one time, but she immediately agreed to his offer.

It's a beautiful video where a rainbow-colored line changes according to the main character's emotions. "It wasn't necessary to discuss the meaning of the song with Aragaki, I immediately had an image in my head", explains Momose. Aragaki says, "I'm so happy and I didn't consider it at all. He just suddenly came to me. I'm really happy". She herself also appears in the music video in a scene where the animation changes into a real image.

As mentioned above, there will be 3 different jacket versions for the CD. When Momose saw Aragaki's own drawn picture, he immediately asked her whether she would want to join the company; that's just how good her drawings are.

As a bonus you will get the word "Loneliness", when you put the 3 back covers of the CD next to each other. Will she be able to reach the 1st rank with the support of Ghibli?

Written by: jyoyu.blogspot.com / Source: SportsHochi
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