Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is selling incredibly well in Japan via Twitter posts translated by a NeoGaf forum member.
According to the translation, the game shipped nearly 600k copies last week (including an additional shipment), with an additional 300k units set to be released in the coming days. Add to that the 200k downloads of the game (the download cards for which are also selling out), and Nintendo will no doubt be delighted with the game's performance.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is likely to be released on 3DS in Europe sometime in early 2013.