Yay! The new Miss Universe Japan hails from round these parts (Shizuoka), although I’m not exactly sure where, thus hobbling my plans to stalk interview her - even her blog doesn’t surrender such vital information, although she could really do with installing some kind of spam filter. Check out this screen cap of her trackbacks:

Riyo Mori is a ballet dancer, and, while she may be exceptionally beautiful, I’m not sure she’s as hot as Kurara Chibana, last year’s Miss Universe Japan.

(I actually thought Chibana had won the Miss Universe title until I stopped by her Wikipedia article. You got to love that media saturation in Japan - best form of brainwashing known to man. I’ll be eating natto with a ‘mmmmm, yum’ expression on my face next.)

No, I’m not hawking tickets, I’m just disturbed that they’ve made it this far. In fact, the whole AKB48 thing really disturbs me. It’s like a confluence of everything I find sinister in the entertainment world - industry marketing tactics, socially dysfunctional fortysomething males dribbling in public, fifteen year old girls making more money than me…

(Although on reflection, considering the money gets split 48 ways, p’raps not.)

For those not in the know, AKB48 are a pop group with three groups contained inside, like Russian dolls, although there are currently only two teams of girls who make up the whole 48 referenced in their name, so that’s not actually a 48 just yet. My bet is that it will be after the third team is completed.

Does this all sound a bit bananas and difficult to follow?

They’re a manufactured pop group who began their career in Akihabara, performing on the 8th floor of Don Quixote. The concerts may have been every day or just every week, I can’t really remember. The more cynical amongst you may note that they began their career in Akihabara and are named after it. The more cynical than that amongst you might also like to know that their second single was called “Skirt,Gently floating” and featured some super short skirts in the video.

Tie these two facts together, plus the incredible amount of information to gather owing to the number of girls in the group & you have a recipe for true otaku adoration. Although I am sure they have gone to enough finishing school to allow them to be good role models for all young people of high school age.

Expect to see more of Dessert, I mean, AKB48, in the future…

(You could start here at Wikipedia, if you’d like.
And if you’d like to understand the Dessert reference above, take a look at this other Wikipedia page about the disturbing-in-an-altogether-different-way film, Suicide Circle.
Or, if you’d just like to be entertained by the girls, then their official site is here.)

Utada Hikaru has broken up with her husband Kazuaki Kiriya, as of Friday last week.

Kiriya is probably best known for directing the film adaptation of Casshern, and quite a few of his wife’s videos as well.

Hikki cited a lack of communication and the old ‘grown apart’ chestnut as the reasons behind the split.

via Yahoo.