Nakayama Yuma in a new drama and a Junior concert

It has been announced that Nakayama Yuma will again star in a drama series. The drama will be for the summer and will co-star Johnny's daisenpai Masahiko Kondo. It will air on Fuji TV, though not much else is known about the drama at the moment.

Tokyo Graph article. (English)


After causing some confusion when one of the Japanese online news sites mentioned Nakayama doing a concert in Tokyo in June at the end of their article about his new drama, their has been an official announcement of a Junior concert on June 7th. It will take place at the Tokyo Internatianl Forum Hall and is called ジャニーズJr.～NEWユニット～大集合2009！(Johnny's Jr. ~NEW Unit~ Big Gathering 2009!). The 'new' units listed are, Nakayama Yuma w/7-East, Morimoto Shintarou, B.I. Shadow and Mis Snow Man. A.B.C.-Z are listed to be making a special appearence and of course it mentions that the rest of Johnny's Jrs will be participating.

I'm going to see about trying to go, though I'm boggling a bit about some of the developments for this concert. As great as it is to see Nakayama being able to perform in Tokyo finally it's bizarre that it looks like he's the only Kansai Junior doing so. 7-East is most likely going to be a new Tokyo Jr. unit, which seems a bit of a slap in the face for Nakayama's Kansai group, Hey! Say! 7-West. But I guess they couldn't call them a 'new' unit as they've been around for a while. But if they're going to call Shintarou a 'new' unit I can't see why not though.

Also the other thing that caught my attention is the lack of Hip Hop Jump. They've been around for about as long as B.I. Shadow,IIRC, so it doesn't make sense that they're not listed. That is unless they've been disbanded. The first May episode of Shounen Club was HHJ-less even though Juri, Keigo and Luis were there. Usually even with only a few of the members present they will still be announced as the full group, though that didn't happen and Luis was even introduced as a Fresh Junior, even though he's been around longer than Juri and Keigo. So I have no idea what's going on with that group. Though somehow I will not be surprised if some members of HHJ end up being members of 7-East.

I'm not surprised to see Kis-My-Ft2 not listed as between back dancing for KAT-TUN for their dome concerts and then Playzone, they're rather busy and it probably would just be too much to ask them to do a concert as well.