OMG, it’s almost Christmas! I don’t have enough time to do anything, so this has to be a very short, very quick post about three items of news that all, as it so happens, have to do with this year’s Kohaku Utagassen.
1. SMAP are gonna do a Michael Jackson tribute! This will be worth watching, even though perhaps a bit cringeworthy because they are neither great singers nor great dancers, but what the heck. I think it’s a great idea, and I’m looking forward to it. Go SMAP!
2. There will be a special kids section on Kohaku this year, labeled Kodomo Kohaku. And no, I’m not talking about NYC boys. There will be a total of four child acts. For the red team it will be Ohashi Nozomi (the girl from the Gake no ue no Ponyo theme song, which will part of her Kohaku medley) and 11-year-old Enka singer Sakura Maya. For the white team it will be 8-year-old Kato Seishiro (whom you may remember from his role in Ninkyo Helper, and who’s also the Japanese voice of Max in the movie Where The Wild Things Are), and the 2nd act for the white team will be… Snow Prince Gasshoudan! 
Yay! Judging the Kodomo Kohaku competition will be Ryotsu Kankichi, who is of course a fictional character played by Katori Shingo. Now he better remember what stable he’s coming from. >.o
3. And talking about tweaking the competition, NYC boys have apparently designed a t-shirt commemorating their first (and presumably last) appearance on Kohaku Utagassen. But hold on, fans, you can put your wallets back in your pockets because you won’t be able to buy it. It’s a very limited item (there are only 42 of them), and they’ will be given to six sports newspapers (like Daily Sports, where I have this news from). Whether the newspapers will in turn give the t-shirts away to their readers, or whether they will keep them as compensation for writing favorable articles about NYC boys and their appearance on Kohaku is something I do not know.
So there.
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