CupidsBow

Soooooo....Yangyang International is the closest... I mean this is better than going to Incheon or Gimpo which is frequently flooded by fangirls with cameras so most uh fangirl types (cough me cough) are well used to hauling ass to Incheon and lining a pathway for x person to walk past them lol If they are lucky they should be able to get off the plane and get to their bus or whatever to Pyeongchang/Gangneung without being totally flooded by media and fans.

I'm (hopefully, i'm shite with money) upgrading my camera for PC and the practices (whenever the tickets come out) so hopefully, I can contribute some nice photos (I dislike video) It helps that the men's event is so spicy in general but they're not exactly wrong that Yuzu is the main pull. I saw Korean news sites around 4CC talking about how ticket sales exceeded expectations and attributing that to Hanyu going. He's the most well known male skater, pretty much the only one any of my co-workers know, and a fair amount of my students know of him as well but I doubt they could name any other big competitors. (Today a student actually complained no one famous was going to Pyeongchang and my co-teacher said 'What about Hanyu' and the student was like 'oh yeah'. These are 11-year-olds lol I would expect most of them to not know, him but quite a few do) Not sure about Yuzu's Korean fan demographics but he seems to have a nice spread of girls in their late teens-early 20s, to aunties, and some guys. If he performs well at Pyeongchang with his current programs I can imagine him being pretty well received here. But I'm biased and also not actually Korean

I dunno how much say Yuzu gets in doing the team event or not but I kinda think he might want to do it? I would maybe prefer him doing 4cc and skipping the team event though...

TBH I think it's more to get the general feeling to 1) being sympathetic to Yuzuru; by all accounts he is doing everything he should be doing for his ankle to heal, he's being careful in his rehabilitation and isn't being hasty trying to rush back into training despite wanting to go to nationals 2) Creating the feeling where even the most casual interest reader seeing this news wants him to withdraw for his own good to ensure he is fully healed for where it really matters - at Olympics. The message seems to be that he is healing, but it took a little longer than expected because of the injury being a bit more serious than initially thought and some lingering inflammation, but he is on track to be fit and in good condition to compete in time for Pyeongchang. I think it's less about preparing for withdrawal news but more to prepare the public for him to be named on the team despite him not attending nationals. I assume that's also why they are holding off the announcement - partially because he may want that door open just in case even though it is becoming apparent there is no way he can make it without screwing up his recovery/rehab process but also to make it clear that despite the injury he really was trying very hard to be able to compete, but just wasn't. Average Joe of Japan with a passing interest in figure skating / skating fans that aren't particularly invested in Yuzu are going to find it way easier to swallow when he is announced for Pyeongchang with it being made so clear that he wanted to get the spot through competing at Nationals but circumstances forced him to withdraw. He's being painted in a very sympathetic light while still giving the impression he should be back on the ice and training early/ mid-January. I mean. I've been swayed. I now am team 'hope he withdraws from Nationals but I hope his team has considered 4CC, damn I wish I had applied for tickets to Teipei' while as recent as yesterday I was rooting for him to be able to go Nats.

I saw this and worried. Is it clear if he HAD the inflammation or if the inflammation occurred recently in response to him trying to get back in the ice cuz if it’s the latter than yeah he’s definitely withdrawing from nats and he’s back off the ice for even longer

Guys... He's not going to carry this injury to Olys. He's healing. He's rested. He's close to completing his rehab / has completed it. He's gradually easing himself back to on-ice training. I don't think he will go to nats unless he feels secure the risk of re-injury is low. The only way he's going to be injured at Oly is if he has another accident which would be freakishly unlucky even for him.

+5 GOE

(I just see the booty tbh)

At least Japan is the same time zone as Korea...

You never know, he may have requested to go to 4CC to ensure he had something before PC, otherwise the pressure would be too much. That's mostly my concern. There's enough pressure going into the olympics without adding the additional nerves of it being the first comp in 4 months after injury. I still kind of hope he can be fit for nationals for this reason but if he's not ready to compete I really don't want him to push himself. I'm glad he's seemingly taking it slow and focusing more on fully recovering rather than trying to push himself to compete. gotta find that bright side

Oh boy, prepare your office for a f*ck load of responses then. Even if I knew Japanese I wouldn't know where to even begin with that kind of thing. What an odd question to open up to the public.

yeah I'm kinda of .... torn about this. If it is true that he is back on the ice then... It would be recent, right? the message that there will still pain was from the 8th, it's now the 12th. Perhaps the pain he was talking about was minor and fading but enough to have him hesitant to return to the ice but nothing serious and faded through the past few days of his rehab program and whoever is doing the rehab with him felt comfortable clearing him to go on the ice and start rebuilding. With how cautious Yuzuru has sounded in interviews for the past year I'd like to believe he won't be pushing himself to get back on the ice too early. I'd also like to believe that, with how his team has seemed to approach this so far, they wouldn't allow him on the ice if they weren't satisfied the risk of the injury relapsing was low. So...if he has returned to the ice surely it's a good thing? The pain is gone, the injury is sufficiently healed and he feels comfortable to restart training. It's possible the previous announcement was more to prepare people and moderate expectations so if he does choose to withdraw. it's understandable why, and if he competes but isn't at his best, it's understandable why. I agree with the general message that if Yuzuru doesn't necessarily need to compete to make the Olympic team then there's really no need to rush himself and it's better to put more focus in ensuring the injury is fully healed before preparing for Pyeongchang but if going to nationals isn't going to hurt him and he feels like he's able to compete without a likelihood of reinjury I'm not inclined to argue that he shouldn't and I'm not exactly going to criticise him for trying if he is back on the ice because the pain is completely gone and he feels okay to start training again. At the end of the day, everyone who isn't Yuzuru or a member of his team is just speculating what the situation is, where the injury is at progress wise, and what is best for him. I'm concerned about the prospect of him having no competition until Pyeongchang, but I don't want him to go to Nationals unless he is satisfied he is fit to do so. Yuzuru is a grown man with years of experience here. He knows more about the sport, his training, his body, his goals and what is best for him way more than anyone else could. 10 days total rest and 4 weeks of rehab says to me he is taking this seriously. Getting the idea of him possibly withdrawing out there just in case does say to me he is being careful. If he is back on the ice and does go to Nationals next week I choose to believe it's because he is better and is confident that he's capable. And if he withdraws, I'll have faith that he's taking a precaution to ensure he's at his absolute best at Olympics.

anecdotes aren't really helpful but someone on twitter shared that after not skating for years they were able to get spins and jumps back within a couple of weeks and suggested it would take Yuzu way less time to get back to roughly where he was, except for maybe the 4lz which he might need to rebuild for a bit longer.

If anyone can pull off a damn near miracle and have a strong comeback from injury at the Olympics, it's Yuzuru I guess. But idk I'm really worried that with no competition ahead of the Olympics his nerves are going to be through the roof. Maybe the team event could take the edge off somewhat but my fear isn't his physical condition but his mental. He's not exactly what I'd call fragile but this is a really rough situation for anyone.

I'm trying to be positive about the prospect of him potentially not going to Nationals since of course, it is better that he is cautious and allows his ankle to heal completely, and he needs to be in top condition for February. At the end of the day, the Olympics is the most important thing and that's what he needs to aim for. But I feel sick. It means he'd be going to Pyeongchang with no competition since Rostelecom. It's impossible to know how that will affect his mentality going into the Olympics and how it would ultimately affect his performances even if he's in great physical condition. Would it increase the pressure and stress on him making him more anxious and more liable to make errors, or would the media focus and hype being largely on Nathan and Shoma fire him up and have him in a good competitive mentality where all the conditions line up for him? idk it makes me really anxious. He seems to perform well when he's in a position to chase and prove himself but idk i'm worried. I hope if he cannot attend nationals his team consider 4CC even if it is close to Olympics. There's no other competition between nationals and Pyeongchang he can really attend and the idea of Pyeongchang being his comeback honestly makes me feel sick. If the last update was 4 days ago maybe within the next few days they'll decide he is fit to return to the ice but any later than Wednesday then he's left with less than a week of on-ice training before nationals and is unlikely to be fit to compete - particularly since he seems to be doing the right thing and not pushing himself to avoid creating any problem he's having to deal with 2 months from now. I have a lot of concerns. I've been being fairly optimistic about his prospects for getting that second OGM but this has really deflated my hopes. The judges are already not particularly generous towards him and will be expecting a weaker performance from him when he comes out of injury so will probably hold back on scores to a degree and if he waters down his content they might be even stingier. ugh I'm very anxious right now. I want him to do his best at Pyeongchang and have performances he can be proud of. I don't want him to be robbed at Olympics the way Yuna was, I don't want him to have rough skates at the Olympics and be disappointed. :'( This is such an unfortunate situation because he WAS being careful, he WAS being cautious and attentive of his health, he was focusing on making sure his physical condition was good and doing everything he needed to do but one freak accident could potentially tank everything he's been working towards. I'm trying REALLY HARD to not indulge in pessimism but this is really awful news.

Or if not in his name then by under just 'Yuzuru Hanyu Fans'. tbh when in kpop it's done using the idol's name or under 'X person's fans' it's at least partially to help raise the image of the idol. like another thing that's done a lot of donating rice either to the idol so they can decide where to distribute it or to food banks/churches/soup kitchens in a given area. If attaching his name makes people feel so uncomfortable it could at least be donated anonymously but unofficially made apparent that was the inspiration to raise money and donate you know via the social media promotion we'd need to do for such a thing.

The way I've always been involved in it being done was as a kind of alternative to a gift rather than an alternative for projects centered around supportive messages. Typically we would do a support-message based project alongside for people who wanted to support the project but couldn't donate, while people who maybe didn't want to send us their photos/artwork/messages would just donate, and some would do both. example one year we chose a charity that gave cleft-palette surgery to children living in countries where the procedure might be expensive. We raised maybe one or two thousand dollars, but alongside the receipt to the charity and info on what the charity did we had artwork depicting the idol as a superhero giving children smiles (his smile is his best feature lol). It shouldn't be anyone feels pressured at all to donating to or feel bad about not having a lot to spare since even a small donation makes a difference. we broke down what the money raised would get us so like I think the $1000 gave one child a full surgery and any extra went toward providing medical materials to a hospital. Yuzu has way more fans than my old idol lol it's just that gifts tend to either not be used/it's really hard to get a good gift for a person you do not know and adspaces are so expensive. It's a better use of money that, in kpop at least, fans are throwing towards similar things anyway.

it could be messages in an unsupported language. i tried typing a message in korean that didnt jive with the map. idk

I feel we're straying a bit off topic here but: getting attention from the idol mostly. like we were all real friendly with our idol because.....he wasn't popular and we weren't threatening (aside maybe the one girl everyone hated. we hated her because she was a creep who saw the idol as a commodity and not a person which really grates me) so it was whatever. but more popular members of his affiliated group would have really aggressively competitive fansites trying to be the 'best' one so the idol would notice them/prefer then over others. even in my fandom of like....10 people tops who showed up for damn near every event and airport etc. I had spats with people because they thought the idol favored me (people got real pissed when he instagrammed a photo i took and write a thank you message, particularly because he didn't specifically use the plural form of 'fan' so some took it as a direct instagram directly to me) and fell out with a friend because she didn't like he started to recognise me. That's what internal fan competition is usually for; recognition from the idol. That's why it gets so wild so fast. Luckily Yuzu fans seem very collaborative and open and mingle in each other's projects a lot Plus it's not like Yuzu has any really opportunities to get to know fans individually or express any kind of favoritism because, you know, he's an athlete not an idol.

eh it happens between fansites for the same artist as well if they don't like each other. I got ad space in a small agreement with a few other fansites but there was this one we all really hated so we didn't let her join. she tried to do her own but we had a bigger space in a better station to *shrug* she'd also do things like buy the idol and his manager a coffee or whatever and put on twitter as a food support project so we'd passive aggressively show her up by getting lunch boxes, drinks and desserts for all of the staff at a show he worked on or hiring a catering truck. the kind of one-upping can get ridiculous in bigger more hostile fandoms though XD imagine if fans on twitter, fans on here, fans on weibo and fans on facebook saw themselves as separate entities and were all trying to outdo each other big supportive gesture wise.....

oh the banner one was with messages from fans right? i joined in that one haha did the person doing it post a pic of the finished banner? I thought that was just going to find its way to a competion though i guess pulling out of nhk and not making it to gpf kind of ruined that plan

tbh the hardest part is scouting out a suitable and trustworthy charity. if there is an ongoing charity for the 2011 quake that would be a good one to go for, but pretty much any charity based there would be good. I imagine some of the japanese speakers/users of this site could help with finding a charity or contacting the sendai rink for information about giving donations. (if people go with this (particularly mods and admins though it doesn't necessarily have to be them, it's just better to have a group of people involved so its harder for one person to run off with the money) it's good to have a target date to get things organised for. like birthdays, this one being way too close, or the end of the season as a celebration assuming he does well, key anniversary dates or him or for the site, things like that. Makes it easier to plan and promote. so if we say next birthday we'll try a charity project that's a year to pick the charity and work out the details haha)

setting up something in his honor?? way too ambitious for a bunch of fans with no experience doing such a thing. gathering a decent amount of contributions to donate to an existing thing under his name is way easier to organised. whether it be the ice rink in sendai or something less specific.

nnnggghhhh this. it being something coming out of kpop fandom (though i guess it might be common elsewhere? idk) i do kinda worry we're going to get the very often toxic trait in kpop fandom of fans constantly trying to one up each other hot on it's heels. this can be great if the fans are trying to one up each other in charity donations (it happens) but it gets real dumb real fast. that's why you had an ad space in time square being rented, so that fan group can go 'top that' to whoever they are rivals with. That's why there was a trend of fans paying to name stars after idols (? which i'm pretty sure is a scam anyway?) but it's also where sasaeng culture comes from. oppa will remember me cuz i slapped him! oppa will remember be because i sent him a letter written in blood! oppa will remember me cuz i slept under his sink for a week! Oppa will remember me because i spiked his drink with laxatives! etc. let's never go there yeah.

I put this forward as a Planet Hanyu birthday project for next year.