Xen

What about the publishers of Aoi no Honoo? I'm assuming that any sales of the book will still have proceeds going to Ice Rink Sendai. Maybe they would know? Better to have a go fund me project etc that is fed directly to the ice rink or charity in question. Or at least an entity that is a neutral third party in this thing. But yes, I can get behind it. Now if only one of my fluent languages were japanese.

Yeah, I know, it's super ambitious and probably too far flung. But if we do decide to donate something to ice rink sendai, is there a way for us to donate to them? The closest I can think of is say, if someone manages to get in contact with the publishers of his books and ask if there is a way to directly contribute to the fund instead. I don't think random envelopes flying to ice rink sendai filled with money is going to work. And if we donate to charities, well we need to figure out what charity to donate to. Is there still a fund ongoing for the rebuilding after 2011 Earthquake? I think that would be the closest equivalent.

Actually, I thought of this when you mentioned charity projects: --Since Yuzu always wanted to help the sport along, help other skaters and athletes, I was thinking maybe we can setup a charity foundation in his honor. It's not necessarily for skaters who train at Sendai, but possibly for skaters in the Miyagi region. And said fund can help cover some of the competition fees, equipment fees etc that are incurred in the course of training. -Now of course, this is super ambitious, and I'm not sure if we have anyone in our fandom who knows how said foundations work in either US, Canada, Europe, China or even Japan. But possibly a trust or an NGO basis. And then there are issues how taxes work. But I think this is a type of foundation/trust that would be a terrific contribution on his behalf to the skating world. - He already has something working since some of the money from his biographies are going to Ice Rink Sendai. The question is is it easy to hook up such an initiative with the existing fund for the ice rink? Edit: I don't think this will work as a birthday project. More like what happens when he decides to...that...project.

Hmm, interesting question. When do certain actions by fans become "stalkerish"? Where do we draw the line between acceptable behavior and non-acceptable behavior. I think at this point, he's learned to take everything in stride, even if he's super embarrassed or uncomfortable. And the feelings behind the poster is of course, understandable, just well wishes from fans. The problem with any action we do as fans, is whether what we do is for the benefit of the star/athlete/idol etc that we admire, or is it just a way for us to vent our feelings. In so far as public declarations are concerned, I guess I err on the side of more subtlety, where the person in question can kind of either leave it or take it. Kind of like the banner that we gathered here-it's something that he can hide in the deep recesses of a closet if he's embarrassed by it. Or proudly hang it up on a wall. But the key is that where the banner hangs, that's up to him to decide-we got our feelings and messages across, but how to deal with it is up to him and in his own private sphere. Same with scrapbooks-he can choose how he wants to proceed. And even the world map that we made-even though it is public, there's still a bit of privacy left. Being that it's up to him how he wants to deal with it (he can get the link and choose not to open it, or choose where to open it). The map also took quite a bit of coding effort, so I think that would be quite appreciated by him (since it seems he likes gifts that have effort in its creation), and the fact it is so inclusive and open to everyone around the world will make him happy. But that's why I'm a bit hesitant to send fanart of say Yuzu, to Yuzu- it's a bit more in your face, and more about me and using him as a muse, than anything that he asked for. Unless he actually says its okay or asks to see my fanart, I think it's better if I share it just among fans. =)

I have a pooh and hamtaro series idea...>_< And I still have to draw out his jumps harem court, but I think that's more for us than for him (think he'd be horrified). I think most of the stuff I'd do artistically as a fan, would be for other fans, like @SparkleSalad since I am no Da Vinci.

Or can you imagine what would happen if he ever revealed he liked something? He'd get a truckload of it, so much that it'd stretch his ability to love it. Like kendama-didn't he get a lot of kendama from fans? As for fanart, I'm wondering if certain types would work better? The issue of his face might be more due to him wanting to be known as an athlete and not an idol-and focusing on his face makes him more idol than athlete. So if that is the logic behind not liking some fanart, then wouldn't the more anime/manga based fanart of say runrun's style, be better? Maybe a comic strip showing him and all his "friendly" jumps might be appreciated. (I wonder why no one gave him a ceramic tea cup set yet. You know, those really really stoic asian types that have paint on the inside of the cup instead of the outside, and can be inspired by his programs. The only fanart I've given out were ironically, speed sketches I did while waiting in the autograph lines-usually they're amazed that someone managed to capture their image while they were not standing still, and in under 5-10 mins per person.)

I'm torn between shaking my head at the billboard at the TCC busstop, headdesking, and laughing my head off. It's a bit...much. Imagine if he were a female skater, or rather a normal everyday lady. Whomever did that billboard would be accused of stalking on the extreme end, or that better be a "will you marry me" poster. For now let's just chalk it up as an extreme manifestation of Yuzu withdrawl symptoms. Maybe they should have made a Pooh poster, and it would have been obvious enough whom the message is for? @SparkleSalad : I like your avatar. =) But yes, the earphones ad would make a lot more sense, more subtle and definitely inside joke material. Better yet, since he loves earphones so much, think about an earphone giveaway ad inside TCC, where you have to scan the barcode to get your pair with your name engraved on it. Doesn't work for anyone else, but him, and only responds to a request to engrave Yuzuru Hanyu on it. Think that's probably fun and extra enough for him? @KatjaThera: When did he make this mention of fanart? Was it the asaichi show when they pinned up those fanarts? I think part of the problem is people want to show him that they love him, but we don't actually know much about him-other than pooh and earphones- that it's actually hard to give individually a meaningful gift. Based on what he has taken, it seems collective gifts (scrapbooks, banners) tend to be well received, and well made personal crafts like the swans, the hand-painted fans are also okay because there is a lot of thought and effort put into them. As for fanart...well I'm in the camp of not giving the fanart to the person unless said person asks me for one.

Looking at the map its amazing...I can't even make out Japan, most of eastern China, most of Europe and the eastern US underneath all the poohs. =) @Mastyaeva @Hydroblade: This is pretty awesome! The real pooh invasion!

Well, it is like gravity. Look at all the people whose wallets are crying after the owners get a real life encounter of Yuzu. They just follow him around the globe, never fully healing...the boy isn't a planet, he's his own solar system.

Um, I think the combo is scary for a different reason. The popping candy are sweet, the ice cream is mint and white chocolate flavored. From some reviews I've read online, it's like tasting condensed powered sugar in ice cream format, and the minty flavor is barely detectable. It is in short, a sugar overdose. If we follow reviews, then Yuzu's message is more of "I look cute on the outside and superficial level, but you guys have no idea how intensely sappy and toothache inducing sweet I am in real life." That is terrifying indeed. Hah, I'm looking at the strength listed "Know how to relax." Um.....this is making me doubt the ENFP choice. The boy has no chill when it comes to skating, but I think outside of skating, he's actually really good at getting other people to "loosen up." I think I've heard somewhere that ENFP is the most introverted of the extroverts and usually need more "alone" time than others, simply because the way their functions stack, they need more reflection time. There have also been times in various MBTI chats and forums, where ENFPs have infiltrated the Introverts section and went undetected (and then very much invited once they got exposed, which usually took a long time). For me it's more of the fact he's quite...bouncy mentally. There was an interview with him and Keiji, and Oda asked if Yuzu ever got excited. And poor Keiji had to say how Yuzu got excited over random things that he could never understand, so he just lets Yuzu go loose. That sounds like Ne dom-random bouts of excitement, over stuff you're not sure of (at least of the ones I've encountered). And kind of fits the idea that he feeds off audience energy and does stuff at galas, at shows to get the energy level even higher. And they feed off it, until it gets kind of too much and they teepee over... That, and the open practices. Now that he's gotten better at communicating with Brian, we've had more random crazy memelord moments between him and Brian. It screams Fi to me. And he has changed a lot from his earlier interviews and his post-Sochi interviews. There's more enthusiasm before and a certain degree of bubbliness-I think there is an interview with Tracy floating somewhere where she mentioned he's actually very giggly in person. In recent years, I think he's dialed down the hyperness a bit.

Hmm, I would say he's more ENFP, because the way he described his childhood, he seemed a bit more reckless than the average J type. And a lot of his analogies, such as the jumps being different types of friends, and how he relies on a distinct imagery or even impression to start his thought process strikes me as more N dominant. He seems a bit too...random to be an ENFJ. I do have a verified ENFJ male friend (actually a couple), and ran across a few ENFP guys in my life time. Yuzu reminds me more of the ENFP guy friend- who by the way was the more competitive one of the bunch. Got into arguments in class which he couldn't always win, and when in trouble, started throwing puppy eyes at me asking for help. T_T Also had a knack for details (not sure why) and really good at memorizing people/names/faces etc. But the way Yuzu carries himself and expresses himself in the press, reminds me more of subdued Fi and not quite Fe-I always feel Fe would more closely tailor to what people expect you to say, polite but a bit pre-arranged. Fi is a bit more spontaneous, and if used often to be diplomatic, can be equally skillful, but probably better at dealing with random, off-the-cuff questions. （Here, I'm another INTJ female unicorn reporting in for duty. I actually almost thought he might be ENTJ or INTJ, but then thought no, not really, something is off for him to be that type.)

*hands in satellite badge* I'm sorry, but my tolerance for sugar is not high enough for this official flavor. Just mentioning white chocolate alone can make me feel sick. Ice cream wise, I must don the Machida badge. After the ice cream tasting, can I have my Yuzu satellite badge back? Considering I still make useful mental theater contributions to this planet?

You just sit your family down and make them take a test. That's what I did, and the amount of N running around surprised me. Popping showers? From a general online search, the flavor is a green and white ice cream, supposedly very sweet with a slight minty flavor. The colored bits are rock candy that fizzle when you eat it. Which confirms 1 very important thing- Yuzu apparently has a very high tolerance for sugar. That sounds like one flavor I won't try anytime soon-I get nauseous just thinking about this flavor that supposedly tastes like creamed powdered sugar. ENFP confirmed- he probably likes it for the rock candy bits, it looks "fun." There is a baskin robbins close to my home in one of the giant malls, but I don't recall seeing this Popping showers flavor, might be exclusive to japan. And based on ice cream flavors, apparently I'm Machida, Oda and Tanaka.

Among guys, yeah. It's the unicorn type among males. The INTJ is supposedly the unicorn type among females. Okay, so I guess I'll use the polite version. I think the origami swans might work? Since there's already lineart for it.

That was the other one I suspected...but he seems more extroverted than the ones in my family (and an ex). I almost guess INTJ, but his hyperness doesn't remind me of INTJs I know. Question-in Japanese is it お誕生日おめでとうございます? Because I didn't think you ended it with Gozaimasu. Icons- do we have a swan icon yet? Are we going to open this map to be added by people outside of this forum?

Oh dear...Yuzu didn't see this did he? This is an important season, I don't need to see Nessie yet.

Extrovert- not all extroverts need people 24/7. Probably slight leaning towards Extroversion, just not an extreme one. ( look up MBTI ENFP, the most introverted of the extroverts-apparently a lot of figure skaters are this). And look at what he plays- Monster Hunter, which I think has an online grouping function. Not skyrim or any of the other solo rpgs which seems to be a favorite among my introvert friends.

Ahha, no I didn't mean it that way. When I said "arrogant" I meant more of "Boy he sure has confidence to believe he can do that so well and so quickly." How to put it, a bit of confidence that's not proven/fully justified yet. Being a vehicle for the music to fully express itself, is I think, something even few experienced dancers and musicians can fully own up to, even if they dream of achieving it. Maybe he can say so due to age (the young are braver than us old ones after all), but that pluck is probably part of the charm. =) As for Yuzu live, well the lucky encounter at ACI. I'll say this- Yuzu draws you in. His movements don't exactly go from him extending to the audience-my impression is that he goes outward pulling it inwards. How to put it-it's as if he is hyper aware that there is an audience watching him, yet at the same time as soon as the first note strikes, he's back into his own world. Dancing as if he's alone, and no one is watching. And it's that quality that draws you in-kind of like you caught someone dancing with abandon in a darkened stage, a bit of a guilty pleasure because it feels as if you should not be there watching at all. A bit as if you intruded into someone's little private world by accident-though in Yuzu's case, since he is aware of the audience, it's by invitation. As if he walked up to you one day, after dance practice, and said "I trust your opinion, can you watch me dance my program today?" No other person, just you being trusted with his world and his soul, bared with abandon on that darkened stage. Extremely intimate and personal. After his jumps, I seriously wondered if I should clap at all, because there is an ethereal quality to his performance. It's like watching a tapestry of the music unfurl in front of you-and in your mind you think that any disturbance in the music, the flow, could unravel the piece before you. Even the popstar Seimei had that feel to it- a certain pull of making you spellbound to watch the wreckage enacted in front of you. And so you wait, with baited breath the entire duration of the performance, to clap your hands until they are red and raw at the end. Alright time to get more work done, before I start writing sonnets to his skating...

Or it's a case that it forces you to straighten up your entire body which also helps center the spin. =)

Random thought: If Mushroom Yuzu went around selling Girl Scout cookies, do you think he'd make a national sales record?

I assure you that I had no intention of killing you. It was directed to SparkleSalad. But I think after Yuzu's chopin, I might have trouble accepting another skater's version of Chopin. He personifies the coiled, contained intensity and passion of Chopin, going from gentle, melancholic, contained, to finally unfurling everything in all its intensity in the final step sequence. That is Chopin in a nutshell for me. =) Interesting...so I'm assuming they also factored in GOE, which Yuzu usually nets quite a bit of, that helps offset any deficiencies in pure BV. Well, guess Yuzu won't let go of his 4Lz toy this season, with reason. It would be more interesting now to see how Nate will be scored versus Shoma at GPF, and PCs wise I don't think he has fully beat Jason yet? As for the rules, this is something I was thinking over-the COP system and the 6.0 system and how skaters are classified. Well, showing my age, I grew up watching figure skating in the 6.0 system era with ordinals. The way media portrayed skaters, you usually had 2 distinct categories, the athletic skater versus the artistic skater. Athletic skaters such as Plushenko, Irina Slutskaya, and artistic skaters such as Johnny Weir, Sasha Cohen and even Michelle Kwan. And it seemed that skaters tend to get straight-jacketed once they end up in one group in the minds of judges, and the ordinals probably made it even harder for a skater from the athletic camp to cross over a bit to the artistic side. The COP system to a degree, probably tried to do away with that, so artistic skaters had to step up the difficulty, while athletic skaters had to also bridge the gap in artistry. So to a degree, some of the more "athletic" skaters are being forced to do programs that are more artistic than they would need back in the old 6.0 system. And artistic skaters are also being forced to catch up on technical content too. And this allows a balanced, nuanced figure skating that is probably closer to the ideal. If correctly, we should have more "hanyu" types of technical powerhouse+artistic style combined. However some of the more recent application though for PCS and GOEs, the flurry of quads, and the hint of a new artistic/technical program divide, makes me wonder if we ever really got out of the ordinals mindset. And it's sad that before the COP really had a chance to shine, there's now talk of scraping it for something new that might create more problems than solutions.

uh, to balance all that out, remember that there is THE KOI DANCE, and his bieber routine.

Not really, the casual observers I have are not any more knowledgeable-actually it's ironically at times the "blank slates" who tend to get into his skating more and get away from preconceived notions. And spirals and spins usually, when choreographed right, are suppose to give "take your breath away" moments. It's only recently that they are not timed that way-with a few exceptions such as Karen Chen and Miyahara. And then, preconceived notions is I think the main barrier for Yuzu-because his style and H&L in particular is not that stereotypical in my memory of men's skating. I could be wrong, but my general impression of men's skaters tend to be either they fall into the athletic camp, or the soft artistic camp. This seems to be the way media portrays it. Contrast Plushenko (the former) versus Johnny Weir (the latter). Even cases such as Yagudin, I think you can make an argument that he's more the athletic camp if contrasted to Johnny Weir. Now, Yuzu is some blend of both, he's comfortably in the middle, with athletic omnipotence and artistic sensibility. And people don't know how to classify him so he causes some discomfort. Then we can also argue that people aren't really comfortable with admitting perfection exists, but that's another story. @SparkleSalad: you asked about weaknesses before yes? Well my favorite program of Yuzu's to date is Chopin SP (2.0 and 3.0 being preferred). One hint: opening first series of moves before the SE-4S-SE. I also suggest you try overlaying a pianists' hands over a vid of Yuzu's step sequence towards the end, the really passionate, crescendo, furious part-it's a beautiful imagery but might kill you.

I wonder if it's a male/female difference of opinion then? Granted I talk about skating a lot more with male skaters outside of this forum, and there are more adult male skaters in my rink than female ones, and of the ones practicing jumps, spins etc, the only female skaters doing them are under 17 years old. And the general preference in terms of IN and PE from people I know is that Javi is ranked above Yuzu, and of Yuzu's programs Seimei 1.0 ranked above H&L. But I would wonder then that Javi's, Shoma's, Patrick, Yuzu's POTO and Seimei then, are what we normally associate with Figure skating's artistry- dramatic, flamboyent, intense. So when a program like H&L comes along, we kind of don't know how to categorize and process it. Subjectivity being what it is, I can see the appeal of Javi's IN and PE with programs such as Malaguena and Blackbetty-it's closer to what we would associate with figure skating, and the certain solidity that they have versus the fluidity and delicacy of Yuzu's skating, is probably what people expect from male figure skaters, especially if like judges, they've been around a while. Granted, there were artistic male figure skaters with a more delicate style- Jeffery Buttle, Johnny Weir, Todd Eldridge, Paul Wylie. But I would even then argue that such a style is more the exception than the norm, and quite a few have been accused of being too effeminate. Personally, I objectively know H&L was the harder program, but subjectively I like Seimei more than H&L. Part of it sadly is the music-Seimei's drama does draw me in more easily than H&L, H&L is more like music I would use for meditation and concentration. Which means, H&L is actually the harder music to express and portray on ice. Edit：You guys are lucky. Even though people I know like Yuzu, they don't actually feel emotional connection with his programs that often. So we usually just talk forever and forever about his technical perfection. It's more of an objective fact that he's the most all-around skater (maybe some of the guys just don't want to debate me since they can't win). But I think it's more the ease of his technical elements that sell him more than the music/drama that is used by other skaters.

Well after my first 2 poohs, it's not letting me add anymore poohs, so I guess the Pooh invasion is over.