Umebachi

Yes, I think that is the historic reference I was searching for, thank you! China's period of warring kingdoms - 南北朝時代(439~589年). To tie this back to Yuzu, the phrase has the ring of legendary heroes from history. Chinese commentators and fanyus are creative at making these epic references - more so than the Japanese commentators, who tend to focus on the here and now and the kawaii/cute side.

Thank you! I knew that the term had roots in historic poetry. Two perfect pieces of Jade: lovely description of Ballade1 and Seimei.

I gave my comments and preferences, but in the end I am fine with any of the designs! Thanks for doing this @rockstaryuzu!

Oh interesting, thanks. Isn't that a Japanese SciFi anime which refers to an interplanetary (?) struggle on the Milky Way? I think the anime term originally derives from an historic reference to Chinese history (not Japanese history). In Japan, it is a sign of erudition (maybe among the older generation) to make references to Chinese literature and history - although it's not always easy to understand the reference because we pronounce the names so differently from Chinese. We were so impressed by the Chinese lady commentator who made that famous phrase "I am the storm" in reference to Hanyu - and at that time many Japanese made comments about our admiration for this lady and the depth of Chinese literature and history. I vaguely recall that during the Han Dynasty (or Late Han Dynasty) there was a pair of hero warriors who formed a close bond and were referred to as a Twin? Also, during the later periods of warring kingdoms, there were alliances between the factions that were sometimes referred to as the paired empires/twin empires. Since I learned my Chinese history through a mixture of Japanese and English media, I am terrible with the actual names of dynasties and kings /warriors. Sorry for my ignorance... It would be great if someone with better knowledge of the Chinese history could shed some light...?

Utashin RD at Bavarian Open! They received almost the same score as their RD at Youth Olympics - even without a fall... not quite the score they expected, but they performed well. Good luck with the FD!

Apparently, the Chinese fans refer to Ballade and Seimei as the "Imperial Twin". Chinese fans are so creative at finding appropriate poetic expressions and are able to dig deep into their treasure-trove of literary references. In Japanese, 双璧 soheki means two excellent things that cannot be distinguished from each other (like a twin). This imperial twin must refer to some famous historic pairs from the Chinese history. Does anyone know?

I like the second design with the satellites because it is simple, clean and shows what we are (satellites around Planet Hanyu). The only request for an adjustment: is it possible to have either 3 or 5 satellites and avoid 4 satellites? Four is a bad number since it connotes death in Japanese - and we don't like to have clusters of four items for this reason. Yuzu is (somewhat) superstitious about such things, and other Japanese fanyus will notice such things (as I did) because this is so ingrained into us. Hope this is not too difficult to do? Assuming this is the selected design. Thanks so much for all your efforts at this!! Really appreciate it!

Fanyu calligrapher Koho has an updated profile - Hanyu Yuzuru (羽生結弦）written in the soft and gently deconstructed style of the Heian era (8th to 11th century), surrounding Abe-no-Seimei pentagonal star. Sending positive energies for 4CC!

I appreciate your translations! Yuzu's comments are open to different interpretation, and sometimes I think he himself is ambivalent about his own feelings which is reflected in the ambivalence of his statements. I am the same way. Sometimes when I tried to respond in English to my staff (an international bunch) on a complex question, they would get confused and frustrated because they weren't sure whether I was saying yes or no to their question. I realized that I was letting my lack of certainty on an issue to come out too explicitly, leading to this reaction. My expression would have been more finely tuned in Japanese but in English they come out wishy-washy and indecisive. Japanese language has so many shades of nuances that can be conveyed through a particular choice of word or tense/declension that is not available in English. Rather, in English we have to choose from a very rich and expansive selection of vocabulary to describe that feeling - and this would require a whole essay rather than one word or phrase. (Well, Shakespeare was such a master at this and he could find the right expression in very few words - what a genius!) The term moya moya is a good example. It does not translate directly to "gloom" - which is too straightforward; moya moya refers to that foggy vague feeling just slightly tinged with frustration and gloom but is neither frustration nor gloom because those feelings are far too strong... and so on. Until now I was only vaguely aware of this but as I am not a professional translater I never thought about it much. Now that I listen to Yuzu's comments I am made much more keenly aware of these linguistic differences in communication styles. Thanks to Yuzu, I am learning more about my own mother tongue and grateful for this.

OK, here is my interpretation of what he is trying to say... a bit long. In reference to your * query: in this context, I think he meant "skate" rather than "fail" (slipped on ice). My understanding is that when he skates... (and here pauses for reflection) he doesn't feel that he is all that special, but when he hears others say that "he is a legend" makes him tense up (grit his teeth, kuuu) with the thought that this (his skating) is not good enough (to be called a legend). To me, he is telling us that we shouldn't be lowering our standards just because we think he's a legend. We have to remain true to our core principles and not allow such sentiments cloud our judgement... He communicates in a very Japanese style - not through logical construction of thoughts revealing cause and effect - but rather by conveying all shades of emotional nuances. It's difficult to translate into English for this reason: to convey this sense, it requires a much longer discourse on his intonation (how he says things, including the thoughtful pauses), and a sweeping description of that emotional landscape that he is painting for the audience. Hence, his choice of the word moya-moya もやもや to describe his feeling is so colourful and provocative - for me it brings to my mind the misty fog clinging over the dark pine trees on a steep mountainside - typical sumie style. Moya means mist in Japanese, not the light and wispy kind, but the foreboding kind that you find hanging over dark forests. And it describes that feeling of frustrating, lack of clarity, like a blind man struggling through such a landscape... And as you know, he is also expressing all this in these interviews because he wants to capture these evanescent moments in words before they are forgotten, so that he can reflect and later analyze more objectively about his own state of mind. A true student of Human Sciences!

Glad to see the Minister of Sports using her authority on Didier. He is finally having to face the consequences of his malfeasance! Brian Joubert's defence of Didier is horrifying and reveals more about his ignorance and idiocy: willing to ignore evidence and stupidly forcing a false narrative.

Shun Sato receiving his TV Asahi Award (he is so nervous, poor bb) with Shuzo Matsuoka as MC!

I fully agree. You may recall that it took three seasons to get the refinements on Chopin Ballade. Now it seems to come so easily to him. Origin is a beast - an unrelenting dance movement with multiple complex geometric shapes being formed. I felt that he will need more muscles and masculine brute force (like Plushenko's) to make it work. He may need two more seasons to get his body into that shape... For his short program, I wish he had chosen to develop Ave Maria as JW tribute instsead of Otonal. I am sure he has very specific and intense childhood memories associated with Otonal, but Ave Maria musically holds so much more promise for artistic exploration and development, like Chopin's Ballade. One can dig deeper into the music and discover new emotions, new dimensions. Alas, Otonal has major limitations from this perspective...

Oh, I wish I knew where to find it. It must have been late 2016 / early 2017, before the Worlds 2017. Perhaps @ralucutzagy might have it archived under H&L? It was in an outdoor ice rink and she was showing the clusters to Nobu, iirc. I cannot remember the exact location or date.

Found the video of Hickstead, the famous jumper of Eric Lamaze, doing four clear rounds with four different riders. It was from WEG 2010, how time flies! Since this is off topic, I have put it under spoiler. To make this a bit more topic relevant: Hickstead was like the Hanyu of show jumping - he had wings under his feet. FEI (the ISU of equestrian sports) has now gotten rid of the final four rider rotation - it was probably becoming too risky with these expensive horses. If you think ISU creates controversies, it's even worse with FEI - especially because horses can't speak up about mental and physical abuses like the human athletes can (well, maybe not, given all the recent revelations...) Sadly, human behaviour is predictably the same across all sports categories. I am following Figure Skating and Dressage now, can't handle more than this, emotionally.

It doesn't have to be a male skater. How about one of Oksana Bayul's program? He could carry it off with his lines and extensions - which are showing remarkable improvements this seaons.

In equestrian show jumping, they have occasionally had a special jump-off after the regular competition with riders swapping horses. This would be similar to skaters swapping their choreo! The last such big show jump event that I watched took place in the Emirates, iirc, and the winner was the same little Canadian horse who had won in the main competiton. I have to find the link somewhere - but it was an iconic performance - the little horse could jump beautifully no matter who was on his back!! I think the rider was a youngSaudi rider - who had long legs and the little horse looked like a pony under him, lol, but he also had great technique. It was an incredibly exciting event and the feedback from the audience was very positive. Haven't kept up with show jumping (too busy watching figure skating and dressage), so I don't know if they did more. But it takes a lot of courage for the riders to let others mount their precious horses. Obviously, only the top performers with high level of skills would be allowed to do the swap. I would be fascinated to watch skaters swap choreo - and I expect very few would be able to skate through Yuzu's step sequences and jumps with transitions. I recall Shizuka doing the H&L step sequence in one of the Asahi TV shows - to demonstrate its complexity and the difficulty in maintaining the flow and expression throughout the segment. She did a superb job - being a OGM herself, but it really took all her concentration and skills to make that short segment work. That kind of demonstration should be much more interesting to watch than the idiotic Award show they are going to do after the Worlds!

I have signed!

Here is the Youtube for Men's Short which is accessible outside of Japan. Sato Shun is at 2:00 mark. As you noted, the Men's Free video is not available for some reason.

The balloon on the right he says "Kawaii... (very cute)". The balloon on the left says "Sugoi shiawase (really happy)". The cat (below) says "nyaa (meow)"

I agree that Jack has crossed the line and his articles are doing extreme damage, not only to the skaters themselves, but to the credibility of Japan Times. Let's all write to complain to Japan Times about the inappropriateness of this article, and express our deep regrets (Japanese style) toward the poor judgement of their editorial staff.

Yuma's father, Masakazu Kagiyama - at 1994 Lillehammer Olympics FS - you can see some similarities with his son. It's interesting to see how much the technical difficulties have increased in the last 25 years. Also note that the Japanese judge gave him among the lowest marks. Plus ça change...

Wonderful long article on Shingo Nishiyama - partially translated.

More from the amazing fanyu calligrapher, 紅鳳 (Koho) at kohoshodo. 軸 is "Jiku" in Japanese, meaning axis (e.g., of a jump or a spin) as well as "core" (as in the Pilates core). Echo Cheng has interpreted it as an axle of the wheel of life. In the tweet below, Kohoshodo asks: "Oh Hanyu-senshu! Why do Kanji characters fit you so perfectly? It is just too amazing!" Kanji in the photos, from top left, clockwise: 夢　Yume -Dream; 舞　Mai -Dance;　躍進　Yakushin - Breakthrough; 魂　Tamashii - soul. The character 躍 in Yakushin also means to dance （躍る‐　おどる　Odoru) in a special way, implying dancing with jumps and dynamism. The kanji also appears in the word that means "dynamic". The multi-dimensional aspects of kanji aesthetics are captured by this calligrapher.

No, the pronunciation is different. I should have written Yuu-gen - it's a long yuu, while Yuzuru's Yu is a short yu, coming from the word 結いる　（Yuiru)　meaning to tie. In English the difference may seem slight but in Japanese the difference in pronunciation is significant. Also, we don't mix Chinese reading with Japanese reading of kanji - which would be the case if you force the pronunciation "yu-gen" for Yuzuru. Sorry, it's going off topic a bit, but then again, we are still talking about Yuzu!