Mariah Carey (36) kicked off her fifth Japan tour at the Nippon Budokan last night. She sang a good number of her 17 No.1 hits and delighted fans with bits of Japanese like “Genki desu ka?” and “Aishite imasu!” She ended the show with an early Christmas present for the 9000 fans, performing “All I Want For Christmas Is You” complete with snow and a pair of big Christmas trees. The 1994 song is still her best-selling single here, with over 1.3 million copies sold. Surprisingly, though it’s a popular song in the U.S. it was never a hit on the Billboard chart due to rules regarding commercial releases and Christmas singles. The tour continues tomorrow in Nagoya, then Saitama on October 20 & 21 and finishes up in Osaka on October 24 & 25.
• If you’re promoting an already over-hyped movie, who better to do it than an over-hyped celebrity. Kano Mika, younger of the Gorgeous Kano Sisters was on hand yesterday, python around her neck, at an event to promote the Japan release of “Snakes on a Plane”. Set for release here on Saturday as “Suneku Furaito”, or Snake Flight, the Samuel L. Jackson movie will need a massive box office to reverse its disappointing run in the U.S., despite huge pre-release hype on the Web.
• Talento Kanda Uno (31) staged a fashion show of her original wedding dress collection at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York yesterday. She modeled some of the dresses herself and also had some help on the catwalk from Kill Bill actress Kuriyama Chiaki (22), who is with the same management agency.