AKB48 Opened an Official Profile Page on Myspace to Communicate with the World

In preparation to become active overseas, a popular idol group AKB48 is opening their profile page on Myspace in order to reach out to the fans around the world and send out their information.

Myspace Japan KK (Shibuya, Tokyo) which manages the music entertainment SNS “Myspace” in Japan, in cooperation of Sync Music Japan, a project organized by Japan Association of Music Enterprises (JAME), Music Publishers Association of Japan (MPAJ), and the Federation of Music Producers Japan (FMPJ) in order to expand Japanese music market to a global scale, will introduce AKB48's official profile page to the whole world today.

On AKB48's official page, their newest songs are available for sampling and their newest information will be regularly updated in English as they are eager to communicate with the overseas fans.

【AKB48 Official Profile Page】
◇ http://www.myspace.com/akb48official

Aya Hirano Has Brain Tumor?

This was blogged in Sankaku. According to the site, Aya Hirano revealed via Twitter that she has brain tumor. A benign one but a tumor nonetheless. Aya said that she had chronic migraines since childhood and she sometimes go blind and could not speak.

Copy of the supposedly tweets below. Be wary though, there are no links to the original source and researching over the net only points back to the Sankaku post so I am having a hard time verifying if this is true.

I’ve had chronic migraine since I was in middle school, and they found a tumour! That sometimes causes trouble so there are all kinds of restrictions I’m under.

[...]

Don’t worry – of course not all people with migraines have tumours. Mine is an adenoma of the pituitary gland [a benign tumour in the brain]. I have to go to the hospital every year for a checkup to make sure it’s not going malign.

[...]

Sometimes the tumour presses on my optic nerve and I go blind or stop being able to speak, but I’m OK! I’m used to it!

[...]

I have medicine so it’s OK! In middle school I was told there was surgery I could take, but I gave up on it because I’d end up looking like a mummy with my head bandaged up and they’d have to break my nose to do it.

I was told my voice would change too. Having just started as a seiyuu I was not happy about my voice suddenly changing.

[...]

At first, at school my speech became weird and my memory was messed up, so it was a big deal, but that was 10 years ago.

I’ve grown used to it. I know how to deal with it.

[...]
Oh, so you can do the surgery with a laser now!?

But it’s not urgent so there’s no rush. I’m OK. I’m going to the hospital annually.

Well, I was busy so I didn’t go for 2 years… this year my health broke down so I went to all kinds of hospitals.

source: sankaku complex