Since I have been neglecting to post anything for a while, I figured the best I can do for this week (after how many weeks?) is to provide some exciting (or not so exciting) J-pop news!
For this week on the ORICON Weekly Singles Chart, Utada Hikaru took the top spot with her latest ballad single, Be My Last (not surprisingly). She debuted at No.1 on the daily charts and remained there for the entire week. The interesting tidbit here is that, Hikki only managed to sell 80,064 copies, which is less than half of what Hamasaki Ayumi sold with her newest single, Heaven, on her first week. I wonder about that…
Of course, without a doubt, Hamasaki Ayumi nabbed the second spot once again on her third week on the charts, selling 33,101 copies of HEAVEN this week This brings her total sales up to 264,901. Hamasaki is doing excellently for someone who had to compete for the top spot on her debut week.
Newcomer Ito Yuna, or rather, REIRA starring YUNA ITO moved up from last week to the 3rd spot for this week. She finally managed to surpass her counterpart Nakashima Mika for this week and is just under Utada Hikaru on the daily charts. Ito exploded onto the Japanese music scene with ENDLESS STORY as a tie into her role as Reira in the hit movie NANA. After selling 31,579 copies this week, her sales has broken the 200,000 mark and her total is 208,841.
Otsuka Ai’s Planetarium fell to No. 4 for this week after reaching No. 1 last week. She’s still in the game after two weeks especially managing to squeeze her way into the two NANA girls with 30,882 copies sold. This brings her past the 100,000 mark and up to a total of 121,449.
After 5 weeks, Nakashima Mika’s first No. 1 single is still in the top 5 with 25,052 copies sold for this week. As NANA starring MIKA NAKASHIMA she released GLAMOROUS SKY which was the first NANA movie hit. In total she has sold 357,760 copies of this single and the future continues to look promising for Nakashima.
– Written by Tsuki
