When You Have Too Much Money, Questionable Judgment, And Like Idols

There's a good reason this gentleman is covering his face. If you just spent a hundred thousand books and girly pop music, would you show yours?


On Japanese social networking site Mixi (via アルファルファモザイク, one AKB48 fan claims to have purchased 5,500 copies of the group's latest single "Everyday, Kachusha" for a grand total of ¥8.8 million, or US$109,000.




The group's popularity is a result of diehard fans. Even if he didn't buy 5,500 copies, it appears that he purchased many copies. With each copy, he gets a ballot, which has a serial number, to vote for his favourite AKB48 member in the group's general election. The general election decides which member is the most popular, and the most popular member becomes the group's de facto leader, appearing front and centre on album covers, TV commercials and more.

Team K member Yuko Oshima (Office AKB) There have been studies that AKB48 has a smaller number of fans that it's sales indicate; sales are beefed up through general election voting as well as handshaking events.

This AKB48 diehard wrote that his favourite is Yuko Oshima, who is a member of AKB's Team K (there are three teams) and is also a member of Dragon Ball theme song subunit, Team Dragon.

Released on May 25, "Everyday, Kachusha" is now the biggest single in Japan, selling nearly a million copies. Yuko Oshima is now leading the general election with 17,156 votes, followed closely by former AKB48 leader Atsuko Maeda with 16,452 votes. The general election will wrap up on June 9. The bewilderment towards this nerd will continue long after.



    Is that meant to be 100,000 bucks instead of 100,000 books?

    "If you just spent a hundred thousand books and girly pop music, would you show yours?"

    "If you just spent a hundred thousand *ON* books and girly pop music"??????

    Brian Ashcraft = Worst editor ever.


        guys, keep it cool. I mean, oh noes a typo, get your pitch forks and start looting. NO. Even professionally published novels and etc all sometimes have spelling errors.

          Yeah... But this article has about an error per sentence. It really is particularly bad. Come on Brian, you could at least take a passing glance at what you've written.

            Yeah. I just did a quick proofread, and there are 15 basic errors in a 500 word article. That's rubbish by anyone's standards.

      could be worse we could have the Kotaku US editors...

      who gives a rats arse???

      "Oh no, theres spellign errors in this post!!! how will i ever read it?"

      what is it about arseholes on the internet caring about words.....ITS JUST WORDS!!!!

      seriously get a life.....

      Brian, keep posting stuff this way man and hopefully it will scare all the douchebags off kotaku....

      See... I would have thought he was a writer.
      His editor, the one who checks his articles for spelling and readability, is the one who needs to pick up their game.

    It's already been revealed the dude is actually a reseller (he buys CDs and then sells the random photos on auction for a profit), so this isn't a fan, it's a grey market businessman. That's been going on for years, you can make $100+ for an autographed photo, so there are people who are willing to cough up the initial outlay to make it back.

    Also, god, the whole article is painfully wrong. But it's much easier to use sterotypes to make fun of something than it is to spend even a couple of minutes reading their wiki article.

      That makes sense. Explains why he's masked his face better than the article's implication that he's embarrassed or nuts or something. Thanks for clearing this silly story up.

    Step 1. Buy every copy in the local area to effect supply and drive up prices
    Step 2. ???
    Step 3. Profit

    I don't mean to be rude but come on, EVERY SINGLE CULTURE ARTICLE Brian Ashcraft has done on this website that I personally have seen has been about Japan. Can he not do something else? Can we not have a culture shock from some other country in this vast multicultural world? Why is it Japan over and over again? It's boring.

    And what's up with the horrible editing?

      Agree. There are other weird countries in the world.

      Maybe because he's living in Japan? Maybe? Just maybe?


      I think you can tell where that article's about by the URL.

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