Singer Utada Hikaru (23) is to go on her first national tour in six years. Starting July 1 in Sendai, she will play 22 shows in 11 cities on the Utada United 2006 tour. The undoubtedly sold out venues will seat a total of about 190,000 fans. Hundreds of thousands of others will have to make do with her new album, “Ultra Blue”, due out on June 14. Towards the end of her first national tour as a teenager in 2000, Utada suffered health problems and had to cancel one show. She has been busy on many fronts over the last few years – she went to the US to study at Columbia University, had minimal success in the US market using the artist name Utada two years ago, and debuted in Europe last year. She is now a married woman, getting hitched to photographer Kiritani Kazuaki in 2002, and will be bringing a lot of new experiences to the stage this summer.
• Tommy Lee Jones is the latest Hollywood star to take to the Japanese TV commercial market. He appears in the new CM for Suntory’s Boss Rainbow Mountain Blend canned coffee. Jones plays an alien on a scouting mission to Earth who visits a gyudon (beef bowl) restaurant and very convincingly has trouble eating with chopsticks. He reports home on the stupidity of people and the beauty of the sunrise.
• Goofy comedian Udo Suzuki (36) of the duo Kyaeen finally has his first romance. The women’s weekly magazine Josei Jishin reported that he is living with a sommelier in her 20s who is said to look like the singer BoA. Udo says he has met her parents and that they plan to marry within the year.
Fashion model Marie (18) is to make her official showbiz debut this month. She will present the new “Oxala!” show on the Space Shower TV channel. The daughter of a Canadian entrepreneur and Japanese mother, she is also the grand-daughter of a late French movie producer and judge at the Cannes Film Festival. Her family have five homes around the world and her father, whose company makes oil for racing cars, has his own private helicopter and cruiser. Her “celeb” status has led the media to dub her a “celedol”, a combination of celebrity and idol. A regular in the fashion magazine ViVi, Marie is one of several models to make the shift to the small screen in the last few years.