Is H!P In Trouble? – Harajuku Shop To Close!

I caught news of this on the Twitter feed on the Hello!Online forum. Hello!Project’s shop in Harajuku is to close forever at 7pm on Feb 28th and everything will move to the main shop in Shibuya. Even though I’m not that big of a fan of H!P anymore it’s disappointing knowing that this shop will close. I always go there when I’m on my holidays in Japan just to see if there are some nice pictures to buy. Over the past couple of years I’ve bought a lot of stuff there so I’m quite sad knowing that it’ll be gone soon. The question one must ask is why is this shop closing? Is it part of the global recession and people aren’t buying merchandise anymore or something even worse for H!P fans that their popularity is on the wane and everybody is moving onto the AKB48 bandwagon? Could the Ueno store be closing next?

AKB48 Perform Onyanko Club Song

So this is the performance I talked about on my AKBingo review last week, AKB48 performing a classic Onyanko Club song  – Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide on the TV programme Bakushou Show Battle. It’s 2 performers going up against each other and a panel of 5 judges pick who’s better. I have no idea who the women is that’s pitted against AKB48. They do the song justice as well, a very good polished performance and Acchan was great doing her solo lines although it would have been nice if some of the others had a solo line. I actually had to watch this twice as I didn’t see Yuko, I must have been blind as she’s pretty obvious and on the right side with Tomochin and Sae.

Enjoy the performance and the banter afterwards.