memae

To be fair, it's a tricky expression. You can say 'half-decent' to mean exactly that (my first thought is a tray of mostly burnt cookies and finding one or two that are 'half-decent' and salvageable) but most of the time it's deliberately downplaying something when we mean 'excellent'. I guess it's a bit sarcastic or light-hearted like that.

I think Zhenya has guts, perseverance, and a training ethic that is above and beyond. Brian has even mentioned her approach and how hard she works at training, and he's been coaching Zu for years so it's not like he hasn't seen someone take training seriously before. Zhenya has gone from strength to strength at TCC even though she hasn't had the same success competitively. She's still fighting. That's probably a good thing for Rika to see in action and makes Zhenya an inspiring person for her to be around, especially at the moment when Rika has been pushed to the side by the same girls who pushed Zhenya out.

As if there's jeans that fit those leg muscles!

I was friends with one of Drysdale's close relatives when he won at London. I watched just because of my friend and it was so exciting to see him cross in first place, knowing how much it meant to someone close to me because of that connection. That man is an unbelievable athlete. Like, Yuzuru's role in skating is often compared to that of Phelps in swimming, but Mahe Drysdale does not get brought up nearly enough in conversations about athletes who basically changed their sports. He was so sick at Beijing 08 that when he finished his race (and won the bronze) he pretty much got put in an ambulance immediately. He'd already been the world champion 5 times (plus a silver, and one of those golds with broken vertebrae) by the time he won the OGM at London and I think by then he was in his 30s. He won again at Rio four years later - in his late 30s. Now, I know sports like swimming and rowing have more chance for longevity than skating, but he did compete at Athens (not in singles though) and he has just said he still has his eye on Tokyo (I guess that's what the Olympic Daily feature is about). Guys, he's 41 years old. Tokyo will be his 5th Olympics if he goes. People talk about Phelps and Federer and Serena Williams and Simone Biles when they give examples of athletes in other sports to convey what Yuzuru is to figure skating. This guy should 100% be included in the list.

The rink closest to me has opened for its athletes to start training again. I've just moved so I've never actually skated there, but it looks like they'll be opening for limited public sessions in the near future. My skates are perched on the bookshelf by the door, ready to go.

It reminded me a lot of Nobu (I think he was with Shizuka A? don't quite remember) talking through Yuzu's H&L step sequence about the arm position and how it made it exceptionally difficult to balance but he made it look so gorgeous and easy (and then he stacked it while trying to do it himself lol)

Freshly sharpened blades ruin my triple axels too.

Our bugs aren't very nice here either. We have a mean old spider that likes to chase people and kill them. And the horrifying giant cockroaches. I don't even like butterflies. Ladybugs are the only bug I can handle. As sweet as Yuzu can make a cute little bug seem while he rescues it from the ice, I don't want a bar of them. He can have them.

Oh my heart! He is such a gentle soul.

You know it! Just look at those flashy golden blades! (As an actual magpie, I snapped to attention at every glint of them at GPF lol).

Agreed, and also it wasn't just that Nathan was foot-perfect in Saitama and Torino but also that Yuzu wasn't. He popped at both (SP in Saitama, and that incredible 3A-3A in Torino) and he also messed up his combo in the short at Torino. He lost a lot of points. We haven't seen them both skate clean head-to-head since... well, I'm struggling to remember but it'll probably be back when Nathan was new to senior (but even then, he had that trickster of a 3A out to get him so maybe it hasn't actually happened). But with the value change, Nathan loses a half point for the base value of the jump that most people probably associate him with and Yuzu is gaining a half for the jump he can do that no one else really can - except (pretty much) Nathan. I know he said he doesn't like it and it's scary in the GPF press conference, but I do think it's very possible it'll be making a return to his repertoire because of the increase in value and because he is going to need it if Yuzu skates clean (especially if he does pursue a 5-quad layout in the free, and if he switches his jumps in the short for ones with higher BV). Yuzu has a lot of spots to find points if he's okay with risking consistency a bit more. He's got the WR with a 4S and a 4T-3T while his closest competitors are throwing in 4Lz and 4F. (Also, just a little aside: the corresponding triples changed value too, didn't they? I wonder if we might see some more -3Lo combinations in the men's instead of the eu-3S or -3T if it's worth a bit more. I love a triple loop as the second half of a combo (or both jumps) and the ladies use them everywhere but we don't see them much in the men's.)

I tried looking for photos of the interior but didn't have luck. Just lots of random, converted boatsheds that are now restaurants and bars lol. It was the TCC ceiling that gave it the boatshed vibes - triangular ceiling, wooden beams, big ceiling fans.

It's interesting that to you, a Canadian, it looks like a converted curling rink, and to me, an Australian who grew up in the 'hot' part by the sea and rivers, it looks like a boatshed (the wooden type for old rowing clubs) that got quadrupled in size and resurfaced with a rink.

It has the look of a giant boatshed. I really like it.

In his interview with Scott Hamilton he said he's not sure now because there's a possibility he'll be able to do a lot of his classes online. I think he'd originally planned a 2-year break from studies to focus on the Olympics but with changes that schools are making due to Covid19, if they decide to make more permanent changes with how they present and assess classes, he might be able to continue studying a little bit from California. I think being able to study from California would be the best for him - he needs that Raf time but he also seems to have responded really well by having something else in his life besides skating. I think it helped relieve a lot of pressure on him rather than heaping it on, which is what everyone was worried about. Also. Guys. Guyguysguysguysguys... I replied to one of Jason Brown's insta stories recently and he replied! He's always so gracious. I watched his OnIcePerspectives live chat yesterday too - I kinda hope he does repeat his programs. I feel like worlds would have been where it all came together and he was finally going to get that quad. I want that (successful quad) for him so bad.

I pre-odered from Amazon and used JPNDepot and got emailed after a few weeks to say they couldn't use that shipping method and would I mind changing to another one, did that and heard nothing for weeks so I emailed and my new shipping method was no longer available and would I mind FedEx instead. Then there was some confusion and they tried to make me pay again but that got sorted out and when I checked the tracking number today it had made it from Japan to China to Singapore so it's nearly here. However, it'll be arriving at my parents' place because that's where I was until the end of April and I thought if it didn't get there by the time I moved city, it could at least get sent with all my furniture (there were delays with that too lol). Now because we can't leave our regions in QLD until the last weekend of the school holidays in July, I'm not going to be able to visit my parents over the break so I won't even be able to pick it up then. So I might get my hands on it in September. Maybe. lol. After purchasing it on the 31st of March. Just want my pretty costume pictures and all those Yuzu sparkles. I guess you could email CD Japan and mention that Fedex is managing to get stuff out. Although, mine hasn't quite made it to Australia yet either so...

These are mine too, only swap out Sochi PW for the free at GPF '15. And lately I've been watching 2020 4CC Chopin again and again. It's at the point now that it's meditative. Chopinzu and a cup of tea at lunch to get through another day at work

Lol.... calling out the camera not showing the skater's feet during a step sequence. We need to copy that part of the audio to use in a buzzer every time that happens. Only the buzzer would be broken by the end of the first day of the first televised/streamed event of the season. The craziest thing is that if you compare Baby Zu's PW to the Otonal or Chopin of last season... Like, it's hard to look back from the last season to our boy's first OGM and appreciate that at the time that was the best ever by a lot. He's consistently gotten better and better and better. He's truly a remarkable athlete.

He's really gone off the Fanyu deep end hasn't he? Yesssss Toshi, glad you joined us! But you'll never be free again now. It's all ankle worries and nose scrunch swoons and not being able to breathe for weeks in the lead up to competitions until that final FP jump pass is done for eternity now.

My opinion is perhaps less my opinion as a native English speaker and more an opinion informed by a background in linguistics (I'm not currently working as a linguist though, other than a bit of moonlighting in research I can't do while Covid19 has everything shut down). His intonation is pretty good. English isn't an easy language to grasp when it comes to intonation - we have so much meaning encoded in all the 'music' that it's difficult to get the knack for it. In some languages, speaking melodically in a way similar to English comes across as feminine, so it can be a bit of a trying time for guys to learn English intonation. Yuzu's is good. He uses it appropriately for emphasis and for different communicative functions. It's just a bit clouded by his pronunciation - he has trouble with phonemes (the smallest bits of sound - for Japanese speakers /r/ and /l/ are often the most noticeable troubles) and with syllables. Japanese does not heavily focus on a syllable structure so much as another way of breaking words up called mora. I think this might impact where he places the stress on English words with multiple syllables (basically, in long words in English there's always one syllable that's 'bigger' than the others) and that can interfere with intonation at the sentence level a bit but overall his is good. As a side note on the English intonatation = feminine thing, I find it very interesting that a lot of men who speak English as a second language and an Asian language as their mother tongue, speak English with a higher pitch than their native language. I wonder if it's a mechanism for trying to get that intonation correct and since English is so sing-song, they use a voice that is kind of 'singing'. I specifically say Asian first language because I first noticed this teaching students from Korea and China, and then also noticed it among guys who speak Indonesian, Malay, or Javanese as first languages. It might be a general thing across second languages. It might be more specific to English as a second language. It's just something I've observed over the years and found interesting but never pursued in research.

I have always noticed that English translations of his Japanese interviews/press are always very thoughtful and detailed. A lot of the questions he's asked in English (let alone Japanese) are geared toward answers with that higher level of nuance and precision too, so right from the start he's not given much choice but to stumble along. I don't think his vocabulary is limited - I think it might be a bit unfamiliar in-situ, like he balks at using particular words because he's second guessing himself or he's not sure about how they fit in grammatically so that he makes sense. You can get away with that in casual conversation but with a camera on you or if you're speaking with someone you don't know it becomes a different situation (it's a bit like this paradox we have in linguistics research in that you need to get ethics clearance to do research with people and part of that is informing them of what you're doing but as soon as you inform people that you're going to listen to the way they talk, they talk differently - usually more carefully).

Goodness knows how many times I've watched both of these by now, but watching the first again makes me see that his (productive) English really is far beyond what generally comes across. His vocabulary is really great - he makes very precise word choices. His grammar shows a lot of usual errors that stick around, even for fluent speakers of English as a second language, and he has a bit of trouble with some of the sounds (again, something that very commonly persists, especially in unscripted or spontaneous speech), but neither of those are at all indicative of his level of fluency or comprehension. I think perhaps sometimes he doesn't sound especially fluent because he is so careful and precise in what he says - and that's a difficult thing in a second language you didn't learn as a child.

Even more fun! Painkillers + general gala Zuzu + Olympic dream fever feels and hype = an unquantifiable amount of fun and hijinks. No wonder that gala delivered the goods lol

I was dying with hope that they'd get a chance to do something ridiculous that only they could do like side-by-side 4T-eu-3F at the GPF Gala but then those cursed streamers happened.

*A real lutz. The slow demise of the lutz is breaking my heart. Will it even exist after 2 more Olympic cycles?