Umebachi

Shinjuku station is one of the busiest stations in the world. The numbers might be down due to Covid, but around 3.6 million people pass through Shinjuku station DAILY. I took photos of the Yowamushi Pedal posters displayed in the same area two years ago, and there were many people stopping by to take photos or videos (like me). In Japan, train stations are one of best public places for reaching a massive audience.

This is an announcement about a special exhibit entitled "Natural Disaster and the Future", in Odaiba, Tokyo (new part of Tokyo with shops and exhibition centers, on a landfill in Tokyo Bay), from March 6. The exhibition covers many aspects of the Tohoku disaster. Includes a section with a large video projection of Yuzu skating to Hanani-nare and other memorable interviews related to the Disaster, and ofc the costumes on display. A video of the exhibit.

I didn't see this being shared on this Forum. Many people don't have twitter, for example. Also, posting the link in the General Yuzu thread would probably give you more exposure. I looked at the hospital website, and it only provided their bank account details (IBAN number, etc). I don't feel comfortable sending funds directly into their account, and this will also require making the transaction through my bank. Can you ask whether they have another option, like PayPal, to make the donation? Would you be able to find out? Edit: I saw in your previous response that the foundation is only able to give their bank account number, so I suppose they will not set up a PayPal option. Anyway, thank you for your effort in reaching out to the hospital! Thank you!

I see that you have managed to get the agreement from the Swedish children's hospital. Perhaps you could share this website with others on PH? https://yuzuru4children.blogspot.com/2021/03/let-pooh-sans-and-toys-rain-on.html?fbclid=IwAR1YDwBRPYCJmdeghAIGsm0mBqULyFdX3aXlZnuvMRPEElCcE6pyUCNI44I

...or NOT! lol, He's just having fun and not being bothered whether he makes a mistake or not. Not so good for learning English (Shoma) but excellent for mental health (ours)!

I'm trying to find the source of that info about Keegan's 4Lz, but I saw it too many tweets ago and can't find it.

Perhaps @rockstaryuzu will have more details, but it seems Skate Canada received additional recent videos, and the deciding factor was a successful landing of 4 Lz by Keegan? He does have great jumps when he is on, but not consistently so. Also, he is not what we would consider the "complete package"... All three are great competitors and very respectful towards each other, which is a good thing. But the Skate Canada judges seem to have fallen into some group think view of "Roman is not consistent" mentality. Which is a subjective perception not necessarily supported by data - I mean Keegan is not necessarily more consistent than Roman, they all have their ups and downs. PS This made me think about some of the recent developments in cognitive sciences and behavioral economics - which is what I am studying at the moment. We now have a much better understanding of the subjectivity of human mind, and how our perception of "reality" is greatly influenced by our social environment. You may have seen videos demonstrating how "blind" we are to criminal acts being conducted right under our nose when we are distracted by "magician's slight of hand", or alternatively, how we are made to "see" and become convinced of certain trends because of social hyping when they don't actually exist in reality. We should be able to demonstrate using rigorous scientific methods to reveal how the judges' scores move up when the skaters skates later in the competition, or when all the other judges start to jack up the scores in the course of the season because of this "group think" phenomenon. That is why we need AI intervention and data analysis to reveal these human subjective scoring and judging in figure skating. It's quite blatant and we don't require much more than the traditional statistical data analysis, but with AI and Machine Learning we can speed up the process and do it in real time, and we won't require the efforts of some poor skating fan with extra time and data crunching capabilities to do the analysis after the competition. These subjective score inflation can be caught in real time with AI and mitigated relatively easily. If only we can get these old technically outdated judges to move on and retire, and allow more technically competent judges to move in!! OK, sorry for the long rant.

I am so sad for Roman. I think he is the future of Canadian skating, and they are not giving him the opportunity to grow and experience being exposed to the challenges of international competition. I think he has the potential to become truly an iconic skater, but this is a very delicate moment in his career. I hope this disappointment will not sour him or slow down the tremendous progress he has been making this past year!

I would suggest that we leave it alone and not take it up on this Forum as this is ugly.

I love Musibinaru. The other name for our delicious rice ball is "O-Musubi", which means something that is tied (like string), versus "O-Nigiri", which means something that is tightly held/ squeezed. So we could also call Musubimaru, the "O-Musubi" mascot of Miyagi. Which is redundant, I know, but this is all in the spirit of Musibimaru Humour. On a more artsy mode, found this beautiful rendition of Yuzu with reference to Uesugi Kenshin as the Dragon of Echigo. In the background, the artist has written the words of Lord Kenshin in gold letters. Translation below by me. 運は天にあり、鎧は胸にあり、手柄は足にあり、 何時も敵を我が掌中に入れて合戦すべし。 死なんと戦えば生き、 生きんと戦えば必ず死するものなり。 運は一定にあらず、時の次第と思うは間違いなり。 武士なれば、わが進むべき道はこれほかなしと、 自らに運を定めるべし。 上杉謙信 Fortune is in heaven, armor on the chest, and victory with your feet, Always keep your enemies in the palm of your hand as you fight. When you fight without thought of death, you will live. When you fight to stay alive, you will surely die. Fortune is not constant, and it would be a mistake to think it depends on time. As a warrior, there is no other pathway but this: Seize the fortune with your own hands. - Uesugi Kenshin The opening movement of "Ten to Chi to" evokes the armour (yoroi) on the chest - being held in one hand - as he kicks forward with his feet toward the battle. This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].

That's great, thank you! I will also try to look for the historic footages. Must be lurking somewhere in the vast video archives of Big Data universe.

Before you do this, or in parallel with this, could you do a side-by-side or overlay comparisons of the historic markers from Notte Stellata? For example, Robin Cousin's broken-leg camel spin (don't know the exact name) Yuzu performs at the end of Notte Stellata woul be lovely, and would provide a graphic illustration of your historic marker description. I recall one of the TV broadcasters (Japanese? Canadian? can' recall) doing an overlay of Orser's (?) single axel jump with Yuzu's. I'm afraid I cannot remember the details. It would be a fantastic accompaniment to your historic marker Tweet!

Please stay safe! My family in Tokyo also informed me that they felt the big quake, but they are all safe. Lots of power outages in the north area being reported, and many in the area are recalling the nightmare from 10 years ago. We hope Yuzu and his family are safe, and that this will serve as a reminder to the Japanese national government to do better with their Tohoku revitalization efforts.

One of my favorite fanyu artist runrun depicts Lord Kenshin à la Hanyu.

A bit off topic: This is the older way of Romanizing Japanese texts - "tu" for "tsu", "si" for "shi", "ti" for "chi". The current transliteration style (the "Hepburn" style) is easy to read and follows the phonetic sounds very closely. The older style was developed for different purpose: like in Ataturk's Turkey there was a plan to Romanize Japanese fully -one of those Meiji ideas that didn't pan out. As a result, this old way has its transliteration rules that do not follow phonetics and do not make it easy for English readers to pronounce. When I saw that old writing system, my first thought was that perhaps Tsuzuki-sensei was taught in the old way and probably wrote down his name this way in Roman alphabet. That would be in his style. My parents were educated in pre-war Japan and they learned this form of Romanization, which I also had to learn to figure out what they wrote! To bring it back to topic: glad to see the ISU bio finally updated. But who is doing the research for these bios? Why only Johnny and not Plu-sama? Was this site sponsored by NBC?

There must be something deep in the human psycho-social make-up that leads people (in position of power) to avoid knowing too much as a means of self-preservation. Because finding out too much would obligate taking actions that will require expending more resources to fix it, and like Smaug the dragon, the more gold you accumulate, the more you are loathe to relinquish. I am observing a similar behavior among the Japanese public health leaders who, one year into the pandemic, are still insisting on keeping the PCR testing level low to avoid finding too many cases and thereby overwhelming the healthcare system. For almost a year, they got away with this tunnel-vision approach because the case rates were so low in Japan, but now that the cases are skyrocketing through community transmission, many people are dying at home because they could not get tested in time. The consequences of a tunnel-vision approach in figure skating judging system are not as dramatic as those in the pandemic example, but they will have the same extensive ripple-effect damage far beyond the individual skaters' scores and careers. As others have noted here, it creates a toxic culture of mistrust and strife rather than one of mutual respect and honor.

[NEWS] Sendai Masquerade (2019) video has been exploding recently, with over 1 million viewers. Most of the recent comments are from overseas viewers, which is delighting the Japanese fans.

I am disappointed with this video. It does describe in great detail the famous 4th battle of Kawanakajima, but completely misses the narrative about Kenshin's struggle between his decision to "leave the world", i.e. enter the world of Buddhist monk, and the need to fight a "righteous war". Kenshin thrived on fighting but also struggled mightily with the suffering caused by war. The sound of Biwa in the music represents Kenshin's conscience and reflections as he whirls through the endless fighting and winds of war. The FS is not about re-enacting the battle of Kawanakajima, and it's very misleading to have this video present it as just another typical glorified battle scene.

Those clouds are hiding the tall, sharp peaks. The mountains of Echigo are foreboding, dark and dangerous, not gentle slopes. At least, that is the image that I have -- being from the Kanto plains on the gentle Pacific coast -- of those northern snow-capped mountains bounded by the angry, stormy Japan Sea. It's a rugged, unforgiving country, where Lord Kenshin comes from.

Yuzu mentioned watching Miko-mai as a hint for his performance of H&E, so in a way he has already incorporated some of the ideas into this program. The choreosequence where he whirls around before the mid-program pause did remind me of Miko-mai movements.

Further reflections on the imagery created by Yuzu's performance of "Ten to Chi to" from an article about the composer Tomita Isao: "冨田としては、台本を読んだりシリーズの内容を聞いたりするだけでなく、この仕事に入る前に出かけた世界一周旅行の途上、越後から日本海、さらにはシベリアあたりまで延々と続く雪雲を見たり、帰国後に実際に越後に赴いた体験から、「雪の降りしきるなか毘沙門天のお堂から上杉謙信の弾く琵琶の音が聞こえてくる」というイメージをふくらませていた。テーマ曲もそれにもとづいてつくったものだ." My translation: "Tomita not only read the script and listened to the contents of the (Taiga) series, but before starting on his work (musical composition) he took a trip around the world (and took the opportunity [probably from the air flight over Japan]) to observe the banks of snow clouds stretching from Echigo to the Sea of Japan and even across to Siberia. After returning to Japan, he actually visited Echigo region and from these experiences he developed the following vision: "A continuous heavy snowfall through which - emanating from the Bishamonten Temple - resonated the vibrant sound of Biwa played by Uesugi Kenshin". The theme music for 'Ten to Chi to' was created based on that vision." Original article in Japanese: https://www.excite.co.jp/news/article/E1464485330099/?p=4 In another article, there was a reference to the sound of Biwa played by Lord Kenshin that could be heard on Sado Island (just across the Japan Sea). Deep snow and misty clouds muffle all the surrounding sounds - even the rattling noise of a bloody battle - yet the vibrant voice of Biwa can cut through this heavy blanket of silence and pierce the soul. This seems to be reflected in the flowing movements and mood of the H&E Free Program. Image source: https://rolingwest.exblog.jp/10530335/ Winterscape in rural town in Niigata - Minami Uonuma This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].

Maybe Planet Hanyu should provide a link to this site on its Twitter feed, with an English explanation of the contet of this vidoe (Yuzu's review of his own FS performance)? Perhaps or one of the administrators could do this...? That would give better access for non-Japanese viewers. Comments (mostly Japanese) are interesting. I might translate some of them later. Off Topic: Thanks to our @kiches for always putting up quality video streams!

@Paskud Thanks so much for posting regularly about the Japanese national skaters! I try to watch live but it's usually in the middle of night, like 2 - 4 AM, so I am unable to follow. Great to keep track of the younger skaters who are not at international events. Also, glad to see Sato Shun regain his confidence in 4Lz! Poor Yumachin looked tired but his skating is smooth and powerful. I am also a new fan of Oshima Kosho! He needs to build up his stamina, but his performance, musicality and jumps all show enormous potential. Even if he doesn't make it to the top echelons, I hope he will have a successful skating career in the future! I leave the clip here for others who don't know him to watch - this is FP, Queen. The YT video will like get taken down soon, so watch while you can!

[NEWS] On this morning's NHK Asaichi program. The guest was Shinya Kiyozuka, pianist, who collaborated with Yuzu on Haru-yo-Koi. Tweet with a brief summary translation, below.

We are all speculating here, but I would guess that he will not add 4Lz in Tenchi for reasons we have discussed about the aesthetic appropriateness of this jump. When he is able to do so, I expect he would add 4A here. This would be an appropriate, humongous edge jump at the start of the program, when Lord Kenshin is charging into battle and he swirls around like crashing waves in a storm. He could add 4Lz for LMEY, which fits well with the sharp staccatto and energetic feel of the music. With these elements, his BV will be sufficient to bring him on par or above his competitors. Not to mention the shock-and-awe value of the Nessie showing up in the midst of a heavenly storm.