GAMES Nintendo’s Wii game console outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 nearly 4-to-1 in Japan in February as Wii software titles dominated the best seller list, game magazine publisher Enterbrain said. [REUTERS]

MOVIES/TV TV coverage given to a previously little-known festival in Iwate Prefecture — because of uproar over a poster deemed sexually harassing - was worth as much as 5 billion yen, according to a broadcast research company. [MAINICHI]

MUSIC Pop group Arashi has announced that they are doing a concert tour of the five major domes - Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Sapporo. (2) [TOKYOGRAPH]

CELEBRITIES Director Koichiro Yamashita was arrested Saturday for attacking a convenience store worker late Friday night while drunk, police said. [MAINICHI]

CELEBRITIES Miss Japan 2008 Eri Suzuki is donating part of her prize money to physically disabled athletes participating in the Paralympic Games in Beijing this summer. [MAINICHI]

MOVIES/TV Prominent film director Kon Ichikawa died of pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital early Wednesday. Ichikawa gained fame for films that include “The Burmese Harp” in 1956 and its remake in 1985, and “Fires on the Plain” in 1959. [THE JAPAN TIMES]

MOVIES/TV Leading Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, whose latest film, “Mongol,” was nominated for an Academy Award in the best foreign language film category, said he hopes the flick will win an Oscar later this month. [MAINICHI]

CELEBRITIES Popular singer Kumi Koda apologized Thursday on national TV over joke she cracked during a radio program in which she said, “a mother’s amnion fluid goes rotten after she passes 35.” (3)

CELEBRITIES First, Crown Princess Masako feasted on classy Mexican fare from a 13-dish special menu in her honor. Then it was roast duck and shark fin soup at a top Chinese eatery. A month later, she enjoyed a sumptuous repast at a French restaurant where the US$300 course featured exquisite black truffles. (3) [MAINICHI]

MOVIES/TV NTV is producing a two-night drama special titled “Tokyo Daikushu,” which is a phrase referring to the bombings on Tokyo during World War II. The story will focus on two young pairs and their painful love. [TOKYOGRAPH]

BOOKS/MANGA The story of a police officer hit and killed by a train last year in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, while trying to rescue a woman on the train tracks has been turned into an illustrated book. [YOMIURI]

BOOKS/MANGA In a brazen and ironic new fraud, swindlers are pretending to be victims to gain “compensation” from a law set up to protect bank depositors. [ASAHI]

BOOKS/MANGA Unpublished manuscripts of the late novelist Sakunosuke Oda (1913-47) have been discovered at a bookstore in Tokyo’s Chiyoda-ku. [MAINICHI]

MOVIES/TV The fall 2007 winners of the Nikkan Sports Drama Grand Prix were announced Friday, with TV drama “Yukan Club” taking four of the five awards. [TOKYOGRAPH]

BOOKS/MANGA Professional singer Mieko Kawakami has been selected as the winner of the 138th Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most coveted literary award, for her work titled “Chichi to Ran” (Breast and egg), while “light novel” writer Kazuki Sakuraba has won the Naoki Prize. [MAINICHI]

CELEBRITIES Top judo athlete Kosei Inoue and celebrity Aki Higashihara held a news conference on Tuesday saying they had registered their marriage. [MAINICHI]

GAMES The popular action video game “Ninja Hattori-kun,” which was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom) console in 1986 is set to make a comeback 22 years on as an i-mode game. (1) [MAINICHI]

CELEBRITIES Japanese pop icon Ayumi Hamasaki wrote on her fan club website on Friday that she would continue singing despite losing her hearing in her left ear. (1) [XINHUA]

BOOKS/MANGA The story of a 50-year-old Tokyo professor’s efforts to fulfill the dream of a deceased student by developing a rescue robot will appear in a high school English textbook starting next school year. [YOMIURI]

CELEBRITIES Takeshi Kobayashi, the music producer behind the popular band Mr. Children, has divorced his wife Akko, his talent agency said on its Web site. [MAINICHI]