Oh, I just had a thought. This is 5pm Eastern on the 18th in the US right? Which would make it 6am on the 19th in Japan. 19th is the day Famitsu hits.
Maybe, just maybe, there's going to be a big Switch coverage on all the announced stuff, and details on a bunch of the games for Japan, and the English Direct is meant to communicate that information to English audiences as soon as possible without breaking the media courtesy agreements Nintendo has with Famitsu for the scoop?
That's all I can think of at the moment. Which means there's no Japanese Direct because Nintendo has taken a different marketing strategy with FE in Japan allowing mags to transmit that info to fans first.