AKB48

AKB48 is an all-female Japanese theater/idol group. AKB48 currently consists of 48 members divided into three teams : Team A, Team K and Team B. Each team contains 16 members. Unlike other idol groups in Japan, AKB48 are theatre-based and have their own theatre in Akihabara (a district in Tokyo, Japan) where they perform once every weekday, and twice on both Saturday and Sunday. The theatre is set up on the 8th floor of Don Quixote. In December 2005, the group debuted in the theatre with only 20 girls, later known as Team A. A new audition was announced, this audition was held in cooperation with Japanese telecom company NTT DoCoMo. It was the first audition ever where the applicants had to send in their audition video with their mobile phones. 19 of the 11,892 applicants were chosen to join AKB48, but in the end only 18 girls joined the group to become Team K in April 2006. Their debut single dropped in February 2006, which made it to #10 on Oricon charts and sold 22,011 units in its first week. By far, all title songs released as a single has been made a tie-up song for a tv show, a movie or for a commercial. On December 31 2007, 46 members of AKB48 appeared on the 58th Annual Kohaku Uta Gassen for the first time. They sang as part of the Akihabara performance, they became the most number of people in a single group to be on stage at one time. AKB48's 13th single '10年桜' (Junen Sakura) which was released on March 04 2009, made into number three of Oricon chart on the first week, becoming the first single for AKB48 to sell over 100,000 copies. AKB48's latest single 'ポニーテールとシュシュ' ('Ponytail and Chou chou' or 'Ponytail to Shushu') was first on Oricon weekly singles sales and has sold over 600,000 copies so far. AKB48 has several spin-off groups, including ほね組 from AKB48, Chocolove from AKB48, ICE from AKB48, Crayon Friends from AKB48, ノースリーブス, AKBアイドリング!!!, お菓子なシスターズ and 渡り廊下走り隊.