sweetwater

Get well soon, Karen!

8Rinks has two Japanese coaches. One of them is Megumu Seki who used to teach Yuka Nagai. According to this article, he'll be in Rika's coaching team, so the language barrier will not be a big problem for her. Rika's former coach Hiroshi Nagakubo was known as a good jump coach, (though I am not a huge fan of Nagakubo-style jumps because their set-up often stick out and break the flow of the choreography) but he retired from coaching a while ago, so the skating club Rika belonged to wasn't ideal for reworking jumps anyway. Don't know how she made this decision, but wishing her best of luck. I loved her Frida last year and am hoping to see her skating strong again. ETA: Re-wrote this post because it was written when I was about to fall asleep...

This is a moment before they began press conference of Yuzu on Nov. 30, 2014, sometime before/after the exhibition of NHK Trophy 2014. This footage was probably filmed and aired by NHK or TV Asahi though I could not find the source which is online...

Another photo of Kaori skating for GQ Japan https://gqjapan.jp/magazine/backnumber/20181010/gq-special-edition

A backstage clip of Satoko performing her FP off the ice for the opening video of TV Asahi's GPS 2018

Koshiro featured on a cover of a magazine

I haven't seen this program but read a report on this program yesterday. According to the report, Shinya appeared in this program to give a lecture about piano, mainly on the history of the instrument and ways of playing it. This video is an excerpt from the part he talked about the glissando. He said it hurts his fingers but when he plays for live concerts he tends to get carried away and do it multiple times despite the pain, and they showed the footage of Haru yo Koi as an example. This is how his fingers recovered in 3 days after finishing shows in Kobe or Niigata But he said that he thought he had to do such glissando if he would collaborate with Yuzu. IIRC, this article has already been translated and shared, no?

I think to understand/respect the music's cultural background, to incorporate something typical of the culture into the choreography/costume, and to express the music well with your skating are three different things especially when you are a singles skater. For example, sometimes skaters move as if they are holding his partner when skating to tango but that is not essential to express the music itself nor showing respect to the music, isn't it? (If he is portraying someone dancing with his partner or someone imagining that he is dancing with his partner, such movement might be essential to convey the story) Also, you don't need to be born and raised in the specific culture to express the music. I'm Japanese, so if I take programs using Japanese music for example, Shae-Lynn understood the story of Seimei and did a great job conveying it through her choreography incorporating many movements inspired by Japanese culture. Tom Dickson did the same when he choreographed Sayuri for Satoko. Michal Březina's Kodou SP choreographed by Pasquale Camerlengo was also really cool. The movements in the program didn't specifically look Japanese, but they suited the music very well. Especially the Stsq was so fun to watch and it expressed the exciting music very well. If the skater is good and has a strong reason to skate to the music and a good choreographer to work with, he/she can pull off anything. I think skater's skills and motivation is more important than his/her cultural/ethnic background.

Rika Hongo has worked as a model for Danskin (source), Kanako Murakami did the same for addidas (source), and Daisuke Takahashi has worked for Puma (source), so I think it has nothing to do with Mizuno or JSF. I guess that's simply because Yuzu wants to wear what he wants to wear, regardless of sponsorships, etc.

Re: Yuzu and his choreographers As for Shae-Lynn, having Shae-Lynn to choreograph his FP for the 2014-2015 season was Brian's decision. Yuzu said in Aoi Honoo 2 that they had already made that decision, so he agreed. However, skating to POTO was Yuzu's choice, which was confirmed by Brian in his Team Brian 2. He said that the coaching team let Yuzu take the initiative in music selection. For SP for that season, on the other hand, Brian said that he, Tracy, Jeff, and Yuzu had a meeting and selected the music. As for David, I think what Yuzu begged him for was to use R&J, not to choreograph his program. As I mentioned earlier, even after he won his first OGM he didn't have the initiative in deciding who to choreograph his program, so I doubt he did before Sochi. As to the music choice, Yuzu also said that he asked David to use that piece in multiple interviews. David once said that he wanted to collaborate with a skater more than once because it took time to get to know a skater and bring the best out of them. So NDDP and R&J might have been the result of not spending enough seasons together? (though I like R&J 2.0, especially the part around two 3A combinations. I saw it live only once and it was truly beautiful, not just technically amazing.) I want to get back on topic, but I've already said what I wanted to say. I can agree with @hoodie axel a bit on Patrick's Four Seasons. I liked it very much and I wanted him to repeat his performance in TEB 2013 at Sochi. My dream was to see clean Four Seasons and clean R&J 2.0 at the Olympics but I learned how much I underestimated Olympics, how much it meant to athletes. Seeing the disappointment in their faces was quite tough, so I was glad to be able to see them (and Javi) finished the competition on a good note this time.

Hi. It seems like I'm a bit too late, but can I add my experience regarding the slowness of the site? During SP, I was visiting this site via Safari and my experience was mostly the same with what LeadenMyr and Neenah said on the previous page. During FS and after that, on the other hand, it wasn't so laggy on Safari but was significantly slow when accessed via Chrome, which I usually use to visit this site on another laptop. Sometime during this weekend, my Chrome was updated and I saw many people on Twitter complaining that Twitter became very slow after the latest Chrome update, so I accessed Twitter via Chrome and found out that I was one of them. So I suspect that in some cases, the slowness of the site was caused by the browser, not the site itself. Now I'm using Firefox and have no problem navigating this site.

Sent a small donation via Paypal. Thank you always for everything!

XXIII Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 (13) Feb.27-28, 2018 Homecoming events, press conferences, studio interview, etc. References:

XXIII Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 (12) Feb.25, 2018 Gala and the closing ceremony, studio interview, etc. Feb.26, 2018 Coming back to Japan, press conference of medalists in Tokyo References: Near-full transcription of Yuzu's speech in the press conference of the medalists 羽生「次に向かって前に」平昌五輪日本選手団　帰国会見 (p.3) Near-full transcription of Q and A with Yuzu in the press conference of the medalists 羽生「次に向かって前に」平昌五輪日本選手団　帰国会見 (p.5) ETA: Added a clip to the list (17/9/2018) ETA2: Added a link to a translation for Yuzu-related parts in the press conference of medalists held on Feb. 26 (18/9/2018)

XXIII Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 (11) Feb.22, 2018 Gala practice in the practice rink Feb.23 A studio interview, City of Sendai congratulating Yuzu, etc. Feb.24, 2018 Gala practice at the main rink ETA: Added several clips to the list (15/9/2018)

Yeah, it's probably NHK's footage. The beginning of the Chsq resembles the one included in this documentary aired after PyeongChang (see from 28:30 of the linked video):

Wow. I've never seen the Yagudin's program. (Sadly, I wasn't following FS when he was in his prime) It was so fun to watch! If Sena really is inspired by this program, his could be a fun program too! Looking forward to seeing it somewhere in this season.