Tomohisa Yamashita(山下智久) to tour Asia and release his first album

NEWS member Tomohisa Yamashita(山下智久) (25) will launch a solo tour starting in January, planned to consist of 27 concerts in 10 cities over the course of a few months. Although the majority of those will be in Japan, the tour will include 10 shows in 5 cities outside Japan, starting with Hong Kong.

Yamapi reportedly became interested in starting international activities after NEWS performed in Taiwan in 2007. Now he is finally getting his chance to perform on his own for overseas audiences. With Korean pop music currently enjoying a boom throughout Japan and other parts of Asia, Yamapi said that he hopes to show fans "what only Japan's Johnny's can do."

Yamapi will be just the third Johnny's Jimusho artist to do a solo tour outside Japan, after Masahiko Kondo and Jin Akanishi.

The tour is currently scheduled to start with two concerts in Hong Kong on January 29-30. Yamashita will take a break in February, presumably to promote the live-action "Ashita no Joe" movie which he stars in. He will then resume the tour in early March with some domestic concerts. Besides Hong Kong, his overseas shows will be held in Taiwan on March 26-27, Korea (Busan) on April 16-17, Thailand on April 23-24, and Korea (Seoul) at the end of April. A total of 236,000 fans are estimated to attend.

Before the tour starts, Yamapi plans to release his first solo album in January. Some songs will be entirely in English, and Yamashita is also writing lyrics for some other songs. He also revealed that it will likely be a mixture of club music and R&B.

Tomohisa Yamashita(山下智久) - Loveless

Source: www.tokyograph.com