SparkleSalad

Swimming in fabric was the style. :) Have you seen the clothes the nobility wore at that time? Pant legs so long they trailed behind like the train of a wedding gown! I'm sure someone trained in caligraphy would have written the characters. I don't think he'd have time to practice to that extent. :)

Please forgive me!

I wasn't going to say anything but you're right.

I don't think you can compare the master to cheap, low frame, amateurish TV animation (apologies for the harsh critique - I've only seen short clips - but I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would try to animate something as complicated as figure skating on a television budget. O_O) Have a look at Miyazaki's flight sequences, or even just the trailer for Spirited Away. He's the only person who could do it justice. Though it will never, ever happen. v_v

I wonder if anyone knows the name of the instrument or synthesiser or whatever it is in SEIMEI. It's used so much in modern Japanese music, especially movie soundtracks, and I've been hooked on it for a long time without knowing what to call it.

I prefer when women skate in pants so I loved Yuna's suit for her "All of Me" exhibition but Marin Honda's Juliet was the prettiest I've seen so far.

I'd be for an animated movie if only Miyazaki could direct. His specialty is animating flight and that's exactly what Yuzu looks like he's doing. Don't forget a Joe Hisaishi soundtrack. (I regard the three people in this paragraph to be of equal genius, though we haven't seen the best of Yuzu yet.)

I burst out laughing when I saw the second spin! This boy is a genius! I'm so excited to see the final version. Every year I've seen his programs my jaw has dropped. He always does something I never could have dreamed of. How can he possibly get better? My mind is going to explode.

They made H&L, too!

Someone posted a link to this translation from Aoi Honoo II in another thread and flexibility and stability is mentioned briefly: https://yuzusorbet.tumblr.com/post/148632005622/bits-from-chapter-2-of-aoi-hono-ii-yuzus-2nd "He talked about how the body gets more rigid as one grows older and there was a recent period where he found it a bit hard to do the biellmann spin. There is a trade-off because when he was very flexible, it was harder to have stable jumps. But now, he feels it is alright. He has found the right balance between being flexible and having strong muscles for jumping quads."

Yup! Nice guess! He has special blue and gold ones he uses for good luck, according to the video.

Found it! It's from the same show but a year earlier. https://youtu.be/IBTIcy7Aae0 It's really low quality and just someone filming their TV, though.

I guess it's takenon a life of it's own on the internet, then! Here's the scene in question for anyone wondering:

Oh, sorry. I didn't see what you wrote. I was distracted by the video. I think I found it. It's a 3 hour special and I can't be bothered skipping through to find it right now but if anyone else wants to have a go! Parts 2 and 3 are linked in description. EDIT: Unfortunately, parts 2 and 3 have been taken down. Part 1 just covers sumo but I'll leave it here for reference for anyone trying to hunt down the rest of the show.

Do you happen to know what show this is from? It says he has 10 __blank__ in his bag.

It's from an episode of The Simpsons that tells the story of Maggie's birth and how Homer started working at the nuclear power plant to be able to afford the new baby. The sign was put up by Mr Burns above Homer's workstation and it said: DON'T FORGET: YOU'RE HERE FOREVER He then covered it in pictures of Maggie, changing the sign to say: DO IT FOR HER I was wondering why younger people would know about this old episode but perhaps they don't.

(Love that, too.) Dream duet. :) I've been itching to make a 4-way split with each version.

The poor girl. These intersecting worlds of art and sport are very cruel. I don't have the small frame for ballet so my dreams would have been crushed eventually had my body held up. I feel so sad seeing promising junior skaters grow into bodies they can't control as well anymore. I'm nowhere near as flexible as these skaters but I never really bothered stretching because I never had to. For example, I was never able to stretch my thigh muscles without bringing my foot around the side, same with crossing my arms over to stretch my shoulders - no resistance at all. I never got full splits but was very close without putting in a second of effort. I'm glad I was lazy with it, though - I'm sure I'd be suffering a great deal more if I'd pushed myself. I know little about the mechanics of jumping but I can tell it requires an awful lot of muscle power and joint stability and I wouldn't think flexibility would be an advantage, even if it's not a disadvantage, because you have to be more careful with how you build muscle in the first place. Even now I have trouble, for example, building up my shoulders and pectorals because my bones move too far out of place before I can engage any muscles. Kind of like when you tighten a bottle cap so tight that it twists back over to loose again. I've also been injured doing pretty low key training with a personal trainer (before I really realised I was abnormal) which rendered me unable to climb stairs without pain (or very carefully) for several years. I really have to be way more careful than normal about keeping myself aligned during exercise to avoid injury. I don't even want to imagine trying to bear the impact of landing misaligned jumps (slo-mo Shoma videos hurt to watch.) But I'm sure athletes get all the tailored training and support they need. For a person like me whose fitness is of no importance to anyone's financial success, muscle training is a pain. None of this really does much to answer the question bur perhaps something might interest someone.

Hands down, Patrick of Patrick Commentates Skating. There is no equal.

In Australia it would definitely be classified as child abuse. They go around in considerable pain for weeks afterwards but after that they have the splits for life. I'd never do that to a child but from what my friend said of the Russian training, that wasn't the only awful thing they did (creepy coaches and now what everyone knows about drugs for Olympic athletes.) But that's super off topic.

I have friend who trained in Russia as a gymnast when she was young. One day they just took the kids and forced them into splits. No gradual natural stretching, just *SNAP*. They do this with sumo wrestlers in Japan and I've seen the same in documentaries on gymnastics and kung fu schools in China. So I think there's a difference with naturally, genetically flexible people and those who have worked at or had flexibility forced upon them.

I have hypermobile joints and have been through a lot of pain and injury because of it, and that's just from daily living. I had to abandon dance after 10 years when I hit puberty because my joints just weren't having it. I'm a generation above the skaters we're talking about and when my troubles started there wasn't really much knowledge about what was causing my problems and how to deal with it (there still isn't.) It's absolutely essential for naturally flexible people to build strong muscles to stabilise their joints. Yuzuru said in his interview with Shizuka that he had to be careful when he was younger because the risk of injury for someone as flexible as him was a lot higher. I think men have a much better time than women maintaining stability and reducing their risk of injury because they're more muscular to begin with. I'm partly such a huge fan because I like watching someone succeed where I kuyashiied.

I don't much like PW (I find it a bit tacky) but I just watched the nationals on your recommendation and I'm growing to like it. The local crowd seems to really give him energy. Before he fell during Seimei and lost his confidence, the intensity was amazing. Perhaps he felt he didn't have to tone down the "Japaneseness" for an international audience. It's probably my favourite performance of it up until that unfortunate moment.

I hope all you doubters are wearing your eating hats!

Amazon Japan has an English button somewhere. Once you find it it's very easy to waste all your money. :) Edit: Click the button with the globe that says JP and select EN. It should be around under the orange search button.