I just got the An An magazine that features Yamada and Yuma on the cover. OK, I probably shouldn't have paid $12 including shipping for this, but if I lived in Japan it would be a bargain for ¥370. Except in Japan this is old news; a newer issue has already been out for a week.

They take very nice pictures. You can just hear the photographer saying: "OK, you're at a coffee shop on a first date and you are completely fascinated with everything this girl is saying." "You've been dating this girl for 4 months, and it's time to tell her, are you serious or not." Yamada takes great pictures. I just wish there were more of them.

Yuma is a pretty boy, no question about it, but there is something missing in his pictures to me. Maybe he looks like he is hiding something, or maybe it's not on purpose - he just looks like he can't communicate as well as serious Yamada, or friendly Nakaken, or sweet Shintaro.

I didn't expect all of these idols to be in the same issue of An An, but they're all here. Pages for B.I. Shadow, Kis-My-Ft2, Shintaro, and a lot of pictures in this, the magazine's "U-21" issue. Even 2 pages of "U-12."

But the most curious development for me is the presentation of B.I.Shadow. They're shown in two different spreads as a 2 person group: Nakaken and Fuma. I can't read Japanese so I don't know if there's any explanation in the text, but I'm curious. Where's Yugo? Where's Hokuto? It's also interesting that even though Yuma is on the magazine's cover, he seems pretty much divorced from B.I.Shadow in the inside pages. Quite a difference from the new supergroup "debuted" this summer! It's not very surprising that they seem to be undebuted at this point, but it's a little awkward to see them in the same magazine, separated by a dozen or so pages. As for the missing Shadows, we've seen all "4 for the dream" on Shonen Club recently, so maybe it's just a scheduling conflict, or something. I'm not really worried about Yugo and Hokuto...yet.

Check out the new Broadway Billy Elliot!



I'm sad to see Kiril Kulish go. I saw Billy Elliot twice on Broadway and both times Kiril did a wonderful job. I can't imagine anybody doing the role any better than that, but I sure would like to see Alex try. This video gives me great hope that he'll succeed.


What a talented kid. And it looks like he has a very nice personality to go along with his skills, too. Welcome to Broadway.

I came across the drama Aishiteru while downloading Koishite Akuma. It has completely distracted me from watching Yuma's show for the time being. High quality j-dorama. I'm only halfway through so I can't tell you if the ending holds up, but I'm totally hooked. The story is about a 5th grader who finds a younger boy locked out of his house, then when the younger child is killed, the older boy confesses to killing him. Most of the drama is about the aftereffects on both families and the boy who is charged with the death. 11 year old Kakazu Issei has a strong lead performance that makes this probably worth 8 hours of your time.

Info about Aishiteru from D-Addicts
Watch or download Aishiteru at DramaCrazy.net

Kakazu Issei

I always thought Joey Tee was older than he was. Turns out that for most of those J-International days, he was only 12. Most of the J-International members seem to have left Johnny's. The only ones I see these days are Camu and Jesse.

Joey Tee is the only Johnny's member I can think of who also had a significant career in the U.S. Take a look at his resume . Before he joined Johnny's, he'd worked with Disney, at the House of Blues, at major competitions as a dancer. And this was when he was 8, 9, 10 years old.

Now, he's back in the U.S. - still dancing and getting better at it all the time. Last month he turned 15, cut his hair, and made a new video. The way he moves is really a work of art. We don't often get to see anybody after they've left Johnny's, but here you go - take a look!

I've been thinking a lot about Ryutaro Morimoto's brush with crime the other day, and all the reactions it's brought and is sure to bring in the future. At this point, the reports say he had a confrontation with a stalking, persistent, way-over-the-line "fan," who talked about having a knife and grabbed Ryutaro's phone. Scary stuff, and who hasn't been in a situation where they felt some of that fear?

In an instant, panic can be a lifesaver. You dodge the bullet, the possessed mom lifts a car off her baby, someone leaps to safety from a burning building. You do things you never thought possible, and sometimes a great heroic act, without stopping to think. From what we read in the news, Ryutaro's moment of panic made him run away, a smart reaction.

In the long term, panic leads to bad decisions. You don't make smart choices when everyone's full of emotion, screaming about how "everything's changed" and "you can't be too careful." What usually happens is designed to prevent one bad situation from ever happening again, but hundreds of other bad situations usually crop up as a result.

Should Johnny's Jimusho house all its young performers in dormitories? It would protect them from another crazy stalker, but it would also destroy half their life, with families and friends, the life that 90% of them will go back to after their Johnny's days come to an end. Meanwhile, they'd be raised by their friends and enemies in Johnny's dorms, in an artificial world that might not be any safer than their family neighborhood.

Should kids be driven everywhere? Sure, it gets them away from a subway criminal, but it forces parents to become taxi drivers, for children's lives to be full of schedules and appointments, and it keeps them from learning how to respond on their own to "real world" challenges. A kid on a bike gets to plan his own route, a kid in a car is dozing with an iPod while everyone else plans his life for him.

What I'd do for Ryutaro and all the Johnny's kids is to help them get through this kind of specific situation with their own street smarts and the help of family and the office. Before they sign up, have everyone in the family meet with a senpai and learn about life in the public eye. The office, as part of the deal, should make everyone take a basic self-defense course and offer more ongoing instruction. Get restraining orders and prosecute stalkers who are known to be going over the line. Provide the option of shuttle or taxi service for late night travel. All parents should set limits and keep an eye on what their kids do online and on their cellphones.

But don't let panic rule the decisions. The media thrives on panic and they do their best to fire it up on the news every night. Watch out when people say "in this day and age, you can't..." Human nature is not all that different in this day and age from any other. The number one job for all kids is learning to make their way in the world, not to be "safely" kept away from it.

One of the best things about Hey!Say!JUMP's Yokohama concert is how it starts with such a bang. Before any lengthy introductions, they're out on stage Jumping to their Dreams. Then - bam - into Dreams Come True. What a great start! I watched all these songs thinking this is more than a boy band, these are great entertainers who are going to be in the spotlight for their whole lives. So polished, so professional, and having so much fun.

Most important, this is truly JUMP's show where they virtually own the stage for two hours. Sure, Boys In Shadow have a few moments and I can recognize a few familiar faces among the backdancers, but you are never more than a few moments away from another song, dance, or skit featuring Hey!Say!JUMP.

For the first half hour it's awesome, with hit after hit and so many energetic dance routines. But later it's more of a tough assignment when they don't even have one full length CD to draw from. Inevitably there are fairly long stretches where the music is not as well known. But they make good use of these times to show off individual talents.

Chinen is smiling, cute, great at gymnastics, and more comfortable with the range of some reworked vocals that fit his deepening voice. Daiki gets more of a spotlight than I've ever seen and I'm happy for him. Inoo is a crowd pleaser - he looks great at that piano although he really only played a few notes. Hikaru and Yabu are always master showmen who can take on any assignment and shine like superstars. Takaki does well but I sometimes feel like he'd fit better in an older group. Keito is often English Boy doing a lot of announcing, but I'd like to see him doing more performing. Ryutaro looks more confident than ever, even though for half the show he's in goofy clothes like he just wandered in from Disneyland. Yamada continues to show off some of the best performing skills of anyone. Yuto is a charismatic leader - sometimes I bet he gets yelled at for making too much mischief, but I love that part of his personality.

I really loved this concert from the beginning. It's true I would have liked a song or two from Taiga and Shintaro and Uekusa or Hip Hop Jump, or Shoon or Anderson or Yuma - you get the idea. I don't mean they need to bring out all the Juniors. But by the end, there's a little too much running around and waving and singing the songs they did better at the beginning of the show. It's just a little bit overdone. But even so I really liked this show and I'm proud of how far these guys have come. I'll watch this concert video a bunch of times. I wish I'd gotten to see it in person.

I don't know if it's the recession, or if Johnny just decided he was getting too big too fast, but this year's Junior calendar shows an astounding unemployment rate of 56%. That's right, unless I'm missing something, more than half of last year's Juniors have packed up their multicolored costumes and left the building. This isn't a total disaster since there are still about as many Jr's as there were about 3 years ago. But it must have been a very tough and competitive year for a lot of boys.

What happened to M.A.D.? Pretty much everyone in that unit has disappeared from the new calendar. But they're not all gone, which makes me think they didn't just move the unit to some other "room" in the Office. Last year there were 22 members, and this year just three remain in the calendar, as part of the small unit They (plus some kanji characters I can't find to copy and paste). M.A.D. were some of Johnny's most senior citizens and this looks like they're victims of a Hey!Say!-driven youth movement.

No surprise that some other long-time Jr's are safe in their non-debuted stardom. Kis-My-Ft2, A.B.C-Z, Question?, and B.A.D. are all going strong in the calendar spotlight.

But there are plenty of younger kids to say goodbye to this year. For me, some of the most painful farewells go to:

-Kato Kan, the brainy kid on Hyakushiki who also did a lot of the Shonen Club introductions a year or two ago. I hope he decided he was too smart for the room and that someday we'll see him curing cancer or something.

-Pein Dante Shonosuke, who always stood out from the crowd with his spiky blond hair and goofy personality. I think they never knew quite what to do with all his nervous energy.

-OSSaN, who never achieved the teen idol ranks that are so important to Johnny's success, but they always seemed to have pretty good musical talent. Maybe they could have been the next Question? but only Senzaki Ryota [and Ohta Hiroaki] remain, without a unit in this year's calendar.

-Yamakura Sharufu really caught my eye on the old YOU-tachi program, where it looked like he was always sitting right in front of a camera. That's a good sign, but I guess he couldn't get past that moment in the spotlight. UPDATE: snowqueenofhoth spotted Sharufu in the sparsely populated July Shonen Club taping!

Meanwhile, who are the rising stars in this year's version of Johnny's Juniors? Well, it's obvious that Morimoto Shintaro and Nakayama Yuya are still THE most likely to succeed. Yuya even has his name planted on top of Hey!Say!7 West in the unit's name, and I can't think of anybody who ever got that kind of recognition.

Johnny also has high hopes for B.I.Shadow, and it's interesting that 2 of the 3 members are brand new to the Jr's this year. That's really unusual in this year of downsizing. I bet they didn't even have auditions this year, because there are only 9 Jr's this year who weren't in last year's calendar. Obviously they have a plan for the Scrap Teacher kids, as well as the 5 others who seem to be handpicked for new units.

Hey!Say!7 West has been extensively reworked. Aside from changing the name to "Nakayama Yuya w/Hey!Say!7 West," Johnny added 2 new members, so it looks like he's giving them a big part of the spotlight.

Little Gangs looks like one of the most exciting units of the new year. Popular Backes Kento leads the group in the new calendar picture, backed by upcoming Shawn Goku Fugal. I'm also really impressed by super-gymnast Tatsuya Takayuki, the fun-filled personality of Fujiwara Joichiro, and the Koji half of the Mukai brothers.

Hip Hop Jump could be a big deal, although I remember the promise of Joey Tee and J. International. Cade Camu and Jesse Lewis have survived in this new unit and I'm a huge fan of Tanaka Juri, but we'll see if Johnny can really figure out the whole hip hop thing. I'm also curious about Mis Snow Man but haven't seen anything to judge yet.

It seems like Johnny is placing his biggest bets on Jr. units, which makes me wonder about some kids who aren't part of the groups. Shintaro doesn't have anything to worry about (doesn't he look great in these calendar pictures!) and I think Uekusa Yuta and Kyomoto Taiga are doing just fine - although I hate what they did to Taiga's hair for the calendar. But I'm afraid that Yamashita Shoon seems to be in a dangerous spot. His profile picture kinda dangles underneath at the bottom of a page where everybody else except Shintaro is in one unit or another. I know he has a lot of fans, but this looks like a very important year for Shoon: can he break out as a solo artist or find a spot with one of the big units?

The same question and more for brother Reon and one of my long-time faves Anderson Casey. They've broken out of the back-dancing pack so people know their names. But I think they need to be in a unit in order to go farther, and as of this calendar moment, that's not happening. Who knows, maybe they can get a sparky moment like Yamada did on Shonen Club a few years ago. At least they survived the huge cutback, and this year that in itself is something to celebrate. Like every year, this looks like it'll be interesting and full of surprises for Johnny's watchers.

Finally, here's an alphabetical look at Johnny's stars who are missing from this year's calendar:

Adachi Masaya
Aino Tatsuki
Aki Shosuke
Akinaga Takuya
Akiyama Taiga
Amano Ken
Ando Shin
Aoki Ryutaro
Aoki Yuki
Arimoto Yu
Asada Manabu
Asaka Kodai
Domoto Fumiya
Egami Ryu
Endo Yosuke
Fujima Takahiko
Fukuda Yuta
Fukunara Yu
Fukuno Reoma
Fukushi Nobuki
Funabiki Kenta
Goto Hiromi
Hase Keisuke
Hayashi Matori
Hirano Yuki
Hisamichi Masato
Hoda Yuya
Ikeda Yu
Imai Ryusei
Inaba Hikaru
Inami Tomotake
Ishida Hidetaka
Isobe Hiroki
Ito Junpei
Iwamoto Yasuaki
Kamei Taku
Kato Kan
Kato Yukihiro
Kawamura Ryo
Kinara Kota
Kitaura Satsuki
Kobayashi Kentaro
Kodama Kan
Koga Ryosuke
Komatsu Takumi
Kosaka Masato
Koshioka Yuki
Maeda TJ Hirotoshi
Maruyama Tomoki
Massey Weslee
Matsuka Eijyu
Matsuka Haruki
Matsumoto Akio
Matsumoto Kota
Matsumoto Takuro
Matsuzaki Yusuke
Mimaki Hayate
Miura Masato
Miyaji Tomonide
Miyata Koki
Mochizuki Kohei
Momoi Ryoma
Moriya Ryosuke
Murata Kazuma
Nagao Hiroki
Nagawa Akiniko
Nakada Hiroki
Nakajima Seiya
Nakajima Yusuke
Nakajima Yuya
Nakatsuji Koki
Nanno Gai
Negoro Masamitsu
Negoro Takehide
Nishida Satoru
Ogawa Tadashi
Ohta Hiroaki
Okamura Yuichiro
Ono Myuji
Oomori Hayato
Pein Dante Shonosuke
Sasahara Eisaku
Sasaki Naoharu
Satake Koki
Sawai Hajime
Shimizu Asuka
Sugamata Sho
Sugihara Saeki
Sugimura Masatomi
Suzuki Nobuya
Takahashi Takuya
Takasaki Shungo
Takeuchi Kotaro
Takino Yu
Tanaka Toshiki
Tatsumi Yudai
Tatsuoki Naoya
Tobita Shunpei
Tokura Hideki
Tomii Shota
Tomioka Ryu
Tomita Mao
Ueda Shinichiro
Uemura Masaya
Ushioda Kaito
Watanabe Haruki
Watanabe Yuki
Yamaguchi Kai
Yamaguchi Kenta
Yamakura Sharufu
Yamamoto Dan
Yamashita Fuga
Yamashita Hayato
Yamashita Takumi
Yasui Kentaro
Yoro Wataru
Yoshida Koki
Yoshida Ryohei
Yoshida Ryoya

And here are the new faces:

Hagiya Keigo (Hip Hop Jump)
Kikuchi Fuma (B.I.Shadow)
Kotaki Nozomu (HS7W)
Nakajima Kento (B.I.Shadow)
Omori Hayato
Oota Hiroaki
Shingaki Yuto (HS7W)
Takahashi Ryu (They)
Tanaka Juri (Hip Hop Jump)

I was a little disappointed by "Scrap Teacher." At first I thought I'd be much more disappointed, so the show gets extra credit for effort, working pretty hard to improve itself through 9 episodes, but in the end I'm still thinking it only deserves a C+.

The plot is nothing we haven't seen before. An enthusiastic teacher joins a down-and-out school, complete with burned out teachers and rowdy students. What makes this worth watching is that his class is joined by a mysterious group of transfer students, who just happen to be Ryosuke Yamada, Daiki Arioka, and Yuri Chinen from Hey!Say!JUMP. They stomp through the school pointing out flaws and inspiring shy Yuto Nakajima to help lead the class out of the doldrums. Young teacher Sugi is happy to see the change, but it's much harder to try to change the who-cares culture of the faculty and headmaster. Will hard work and tidy uniforms prevail, or will the school be left behind in the weeds and rubble that surround the decrepit building?

I'm no expert on Japanese TV dramas, but I've seen a few great ones, most notably "Engine" and "1 Litre of Tears." That last one moved me to tears and I could hardly stop watching episodes until I finished. But I thought "Scrap Teacher" started with caricatures instead of characters, and that almost put me off from watching past the first couple of shows. It's mostly the adult actors. At times, teacher Sugi overacts like a yelling and screaming manga character with his hair on fire. Teachers in the faculty lounge are so over the top with their laziness and contempt, you wonder why any of them took their jobs to begin with.

But the 3 mysterious transfer students are also one-note characters. Takasugi (Yamada) is smart but sullen and almost never smiles. He's got the right answers but a judgmental tough-kid attitude that won't win him any friends. He's good at playing this role, but it's just like almost every other character I've seen Yamada play. He's not like this (too much) in real life, so I wonder why they never give him a different kind of role? Yoshida (Chinen), on the other hand, flashes cute smiles even at serious moments. He just can't help being adorable as he plants vegetables and tends to a sick tree - noble enough causes although it's hard to understand how this helps to save the school. It's nice to hear him talk though - he's been so quiet on HSJ appearances lately. Irie (Daiki) isn't really in the background, he has quite a few lines of dialogue, but I can't really think of how his character makes things happen.

Kusaka (Yuto) is the strongest character in the show. Almost from the start, he wants to do his best for the school but he's held back by his shyness and outsider status. He befriends teacher Sugi and they pull each other through doubts and weaknesses. I also liked Sawatari (Takahata Misaki), a bully who has a good side that won't quit.

Slowly the characters warm into almost-real people, and the silly subplots start to focus on the real story. How can the school survive? It took too long, but eventually I really started to care sometime around the class election. That was already episode 6 with only 3 left to go, but still, it meant this class didn't end up on the scrap-heap.

Some of my troubles with Scrap Teacher were due to bad translation. The DVD I was watching was subtitled by people who clearly were not very fluent in English. It's hard to warm up to characters who say things like "really want to call the police if like that" and "we will say out the thing of headmaster totally." Usually I could figure out what was going on, but the extra effort took away enjoyment of the show. There are some much better subtitles available here. Hopefully the links last at least until the last episode is posted.

Final grades: A- for Yuto. B+ for Yamada and Kamiji Yusuke (Sugi). B for Takahata. B- for Chinen (but A+ for his smile!) C for pretty much everybody else. I've seen better doramas and I've seen better acting from these stars, but still, they pretty much pull it off.

If you are one of the people who might have stuck with this page for an entire year waiting for updates, I'm sure your votes will be welcome in the 2008 AFTI Media Boy Poll. The poll is open through January 23, 2009, at 11:59:59 PM U.S. Pacific Standard Time.

Please check the list of nominees, the rules, and voting procedures at http://www.aftipoll.co.uk . And vote for up to 5 of your favorite performers from 2008.

In case you're interested, AFTI stands for alt.fan.teen.idols, a Usenet group that's been around since 1994, devoted to discussion of young actors and performers. Even thought Usenet has disappeared from many people's Internet access, the Poll lives on with the help of fans who join us with their support and votes.

It is a lot of fun, and for 13 years we've looked forward to finding out who's number 1. Visit the website and vote for your favorites.

This entry is dedicated to Akaru - if you can go away for 6 months and come back, I can write an entry at least once a year. And to jump2Narnia - thanks for brushing the cobwebs off and reading my last entry - from almost exactly one year ago. And to kamichan, who just writes and writes and writes. Thank you.

Anyway, last month I saw two Broadway musicals, and I wanted to tell you about them.

The first was "Billy Elliot", and the most amazing thing to me was that it left me near tears with emotion for Billy's story even after all the times I've seen the movie, and having seen the original London theatre version also. It is just wonderful. Of the 3 Billys, the one I saw was Kiril Kulish, and he immediately did away with two doubts I had about this performance. One was whether a Ukranian-American boy from San Diego could convince me he was a working class boy from a British mining town, and yes, remarkably, Kiril completely transformed into Billy from beginning to end - complete with the accent. The other was whether Kiril was at age 14 a little too old to play 11 year old Billy, and again the answer was, he's perfect: a champion dancer, a terrific singer, full of energy and personality, he just owned the stage with a great performance.

It was great to see a packed theatre with regular Broadway patrons and tourists from hundreds of miles away. This show is a huge success, which you might not have easily predicted for a story about a young ballet dancer that's full of references to the UK of the 1980's. I'm sure it will be around long enough for me to see it again, hopefully with David Alvarez or Trent Kowalik as Billy, although I would love it just as much if I made another trip and found Kiril onstage again.

This show is a great production, with an elaborate, moving set, a large cast, excellent music, a plot that gets you completely wrapped up in it, and really wonderful performances. I would recommend it to anybody, no matter where you are in the world, it's worth a visit to New York to see "Billy Elliot."

The next play was "13, The Musical" and sadly this has not been as successful. Last weekend was the final performance after about a 3 month Broadway run. The theatre is right across the street from Billy Elliot, and it must have raised a little envy for the "13" cast to be seeing the crowds over there, when they were selling half price tickets (and some even cheaper) for "13". There's nothing wrong with the show and I'm very glad I went, but it's not anywhere near as memorable a plot: a city boy moves to a small town, tries to make friends, and invite them to his Bar Mitzvah. But they did a good job of showing how middle school is fraught with rivalries, bullying, and insecurity while almost everyone tries to be the cutest and most popular kid in school.

I was looking forward to seeing the star of the show, Graham Phillips, so it could have been a big disappointment when it was announced that Corey J. Snide would be starring as he did regularly for weekend matinees. But Corey turned out to be a great lead and I'm guessing if I'd seen both Graham and Corey in the role, I might very well end up liking Corey better. They're both 15, but Corey looks a little younger than Graham, and I read in the fan group's message board that his performance was a little more innocent than Graham's. That's good for the theme of this play. For some reason I am not bowled over by most of the pictures I've seen of Corey online, but onstage I thought he was much more appealing. It's interesting that Corey has already played Billy Elliot onstage - in both London and Sydney.

The crowd was completely different for "13 The Musical." Maybe half the audience was the same age as the cast, many taking advantage of the discount tickets and rush seats. They loved the show and gave it a solid ovation. I could see a future for this as a school production, but I'm glad I got to see it with the real pros on Broadway.

There's one other interesting part of this story. After leaving the theatre, I went over to the Billy Elliot theatre across the street to buy a few souvenirs. Then, I crossed back on my way to Penn Station. On the sidewalk, I recognized a bunch of the "13" cast members walking along, on their way home from another day at work, totally part of the New York passers-by. No paparazzi yet for these kids.