kiches

I wonder... Are they just going to change the costume on the current Parisienne Walkways wax figure? Trying to think of which costume would be fun to see in that pose.

Yeah, at this point I don't have faith in the ISU to keep up to date with information. These assignments were expected to come out end of August, which is why I think Yuzu's withdrawal announcement came out around that time (I think JSF announced it the day before a lot of fans expected assignments to be announced since the ISU had a scheduled meeting the day after). I think back then a lot of people thought Canada may reopen their border in September, but it kept getting extended and now it's been set to end of October (and I think we may see another extension). There's only been one set of official published assignments so far and Skate Canada is the only competition Jun-Hwan's ever been assigned to. Cup of China isn't cancelled as far as I know, but GPF in Beijing is postponed/possibly cancelled.

It's because Jun-hwan is assigned to Skate Canada. Not sure how they went about assigning Grand Prix but both Jun-hwan (I believe in South Korea right now) and Katia Kurakova (in Poland) are assigned to Skate Canada. Whether that means they'll attempt to enter Canada or if they submitted their preference long before they knew Canada was going to keep the country closed until at least 10/31 is unknown. My guess is they were asked which Grand Prix they wanted, and expected to be able to enter Canada by the time the Grand Prix actually came around. If I were to place bets I think some skaters will end up withdrawing. I believe Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov were also assigned to Skate America and had intended to return to the US after competing at Russian Cup, but Vladimir caught corona virus and they're now planning to stay in Russia and are not doing Skate America any more. That news was known before the assignments came out last week so it could be with the ISU and it's infinite meetings to discuss the Grand Prix actually don't have the most up-to-date information on the skaters.

Sadly no, so far the only announcement is that the GP will go on but be a bit different in terms of points, only participating in one event, etc. The ISU hasn't released any actual guidance on how to organize the events, and I think the local organizers haven't released any information either because they're waiting to see what the ISU will say (plus their local government may change guidelines and policy). The ISU is supposed to be meeting today to discuss the GP in more detail, but with the first GP less than 2 months out they are really cutting it close.

I'm relieved, but of course sad that we won't see him skating in the GP. To be honest I did wonder if he would choose to sit the GP out this season, but I also fully expected the ISU to cancel the GP altogether back in July. I think back to all the anxiety I had leading up to Worlds in Montreal as just a traveler before this was declared a pandemic, it's not something I'd wish on anyone, let alone the athletes who are in an even tougher position. I'll just pray Yuzu keeps healthy while training and wait for him to compete and appear again.

Lower quality upload on twitter:

Today’s Citizen video is out! https://m.weibo.cn/u/2030123513

Not sure if they don’t have contact at all, the way I take it it sounds like they don’t do video calls and Yuzu doesn’t send videos. They may keep in touch by email or chat though, which is what they probably would do over summer.

I noticed that some of the photobooks are restricted to ship to the US during pre-order period, but eventually they became available to ship. Maybe it's to allow Japanese people some priority in ordering, I'm not sure, but I had noticed this with Satomi Ito's costume photo book and also Yaguchi's photo book - both of which can be shipped to the US now if it's being sold directly from Amazon Japan. Some Amazon Japan third party sellers will ship overseas as well, but not all of them, usually if you add an item from a third party seller and try to check out the site will tell you it can't be shipped overseas (although if Amazon was the seller it likely could be shipped overseas).

I visited Japan last summer and finding Ice Jewels photo book was relatively easy when I was in Sendai, there was only one store I could find Yuzu’ll Be Back photo book (also in Sendai). In general the ability to find magazines or photo books in stores in Japan probably depend on when they are released and how long ago they were released. For anyone that is hoping to get the books while in Japan, I also ordered through Amazon Japan to my hotel room ahead of time and just took magazine and books home in my luggage, but I’d recommend talking to your hotel first to give them a heads up and to confirm it’s okay.

It's funny how fans circle back to similar topics when there isn't much Yuzu-news to go around . It's certainly a nice way to divert oneself and distract from the more serious situation happening in the world. I remember talks about the shortcake some time back and I wish I could dig up my original comments on it to share again. It's not that Yuzu doesn't like chocolate cake, he actually said the chocolate cake he sampled in that 2015 FaoI interview with Nobu and Shoma was tasty. What he said was that he usually doesn't have chocolate cake, and that he usually ate "shortcake". It's clear to me he meant that when his family eats cake, they usually bought shortcake. Not that he didn't like rich cakes or chocolate cakes, although Asian shortcake is more like sponge cake with whipped cream than western style shortcake which tends to be dry and a bit more like a biscuit. Things I remember him specifically saying he liked to eat, in various interviews across the years include: chocolate, gyoza, tonkatsu, tamago kake gohan, and yudofu. Chocolate he's been known to snack on so having Lotte as a sponsor seemed to be a good match. I remember reading about how his appetite is slow to kick start. I wish I can pull up where I read it but it's probably buried somewhere in GS at this point and would require some searching, I'm guessing it's a translation of an account by the Ajinomoto nutritionist sometime around 2014/2015. I believe the anecdote was that he would usually eat very little of his meal since he had a slow appetite, but later after meals his mom would find him snacking on chocolate. The solution from the nutritionist was to feed him soup first (like nabe), which is easy to digest and allow his appetite to slowly build for the rest of the meal. Gyoza I believe he said he loved his grandparents gyoza. Gyoza I think they usually servied pan-fried in Japan (so delicious) although in the US a lot of Japanese restaurants tend to deep-fry them (also tasty, but much more greasy). I think when he won junior worlds he and his family went out for tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet), you can hear him talking about gyoza and tonkatsu in this 2010 clip: So I think Yuzu actually likes fried food, even if he doesn't eat a ton of it, although maybe his tastes have changed a bit as he matured. He also that comment about eating fries at McDonalds (there's actually a McDonalds about 2-3 blocks from Ice Rink Sendai of all things, I went inside it after visiting the rink for a midday snack), and he also enjoys the occasional coke/soda . He's said himself he's not that interested in food, and we don't see many videos of him eating but he really attacked his bowl of tamago kake gohan a couple years ago so there's clearly certain foods he does love despite his general disinterest in food.

Same here (though I'll still need to work from home), hopefully everyone in the house remains safe and no one actually runs out of toilet paper around here with the way people are stocking up. Hopefully gives me a chance to sort through Yuzu videos and pas this time peacefully while wishing for everyone's safety.

There’s a Kinokuniya bookstore in NYC, they usually have a decent selection of figure skating magazines so you can probably find some there (although the mark up can be quite high).

Need to do a little digging for the actual video online, but here's the translation of the segment with Shizuka Arakawa and Nobunari Oda where she does a portion of the H&L step sequence. Seems to be a segment after GPF 2016. https://yuzusorbet.tumblr.com/post/155209568957/shuzo-matsuoka-interviewing-yuzuru-after-gpf-2016

The holes are pretty common on sleeves for athletic wear. It feels like you’re almost wearing a half glove and help keep hands warm.

Honestly I don't quite get the stamina comments I see lately, with the exception of Nationals where he was clearly dealing with his physical condition (his breathing was quite heavy even after the SP, this was unusual and had me quite worried for the free). Yuzu looked stronger after his free at ACI and SCI than he's ever been that early in the season doing a 4 quad free. At the GPF he had a 5 quad free skate for the first time, and I believe him when he says he only practiced that layout once before the actual free skate and he did far better with it than I expected. He was visibly tired at the end because that skate took a lot out of him, but I think it had more to do with it being an unfamiliar layout that he pieced together within 2 days and he probably didn't practice when/how to breathe doing this particular layout. In the SP, with exception of the combo, everything was the highest quality we'd seen so far in the season. I think once he familiarizes himself with whatever he wants his final layouts to be he'll be fine. These skaters have to time the peaking/come down throughout the season and Yuzu has had a grueling set of 3 competitions in the span of 5 weeks where he chose to travel back to Canada in between (I believe he's stayed in Japan in the past, and usually nationals is one week later than it was this year). The way I see it, Yuzu was at peak condition at the GPF and was clearly coming down from that by the time Nationals approached. Luckily 4CC and Worlds he just has to focus on peaking for one competition at a time and he has more time to come down and peak again.

I believe Japanese Nationals wraps up Dec 22. This is one of the rare years where it doesn’t overlap with Russian Nationals and is actually a bit early. Not sure if Brian plans to go back to Toronto first if he’s planning to be in Russia by Christmas. I imagine he could leave Japan early the 22nd to go back to Canada or directly to Russia.

Despite the original comments being about Nathan and Alysa having Chinese ancestry, I think the main point was less about China the country and Chinese fans and more about potential money from the US market, US sponsors, and NBC in particular and how they'll choose to market Nathan and Alysa as Chinese Americans at an Olympics in China to the US audience (or they could be as naive to think Chinese American athletes would be as popular as Chinese athletes within China for the Olympics). NBC's influence is obvious, just look at how they managed to get the schedule for figure skating changed in 2018 so they could broadcast figure skating live in the US. It'll be interesting to see what angle they come up with for the US skaters since they already went the ballet quad-king route with Nathan last time and now are heavily pushing the Yale student angle (and supposedly Nathan's plan was to take a leave of absence from school to prepare for the games, so that shouldn't be much of a story by that point). I still remember the United Airlines Olympic ads with Quad King Nathan on the flight back after the Olympics, I found those pretty irritating and cheesy and fast forwarded through them when I was watching videos on the in-flight entertainment system

I would typically agree if we don't tend to see a boost across all sports for athletes of the host countries at the Olympics. Nathan and Alysa aren't Chinese nationals and I'd be willing to say the inflation has more to do with them being American and the US' lack of singles champions at the Olympics in the last 2 cycles. We'll just have to see how things play out as we get closer to Beijing but I am willing to bet that we will hear more and more about their Chinese ancestry as PR in some way or other leading up to the games.

My guess is Max is implying that there will be (and already has been) an attempt to build a media narrative leading up to the Olympics that draws on the fact that both Nathan and Alyssa have Chinese ancestry and that the Olympics are in China. If that's the point he's making, then I agree with it because we've already seen it clearly in play with Alyssa after she won US Nationals. I think ESPN or Sports Illustrated did that entire article about her and her Chinese father. I would assume a lot of Chinese people in China could care less, but from a US audience perspective I am willing to be they will be building up a story around it as we get closer to 2022. I'm sure something similar will happen with Nathan as well, and Vincent too if they all end up in Beijing. I'm sure NBC will try to play up the Chinese American competing in China angle and that Max's tweet is more about money and advertising in the US around Chinese American athletes competing in Beijing.

Doug Haw may not be able to stop TSL from gossiping, but clearly Brian and the Cricket Club know that he's been speaking to TSL. I'm sure if he wanted to Brian could turn to Doug and tell him to stop (why they have allowed this to continue since last season is beyond me), or stop feeding Doug info to relay to TSL. Likewise, I don't understand what Brian hopes to gain by giving the type of interview he did to Phil Hersh of all people about the subject of why he wasn't at the GPF. To me, what he said just makes it the look like whole team and club were not on the same page when it came to preparation for the GPF, whatever happened there I hope all sides learn from it. Either way, Brian and Ghislain have a long and strong friendship as Fay mentioned (saw them casually having lunch together between practices at Skate Canada and they seemed as chummy as friends would be). I think Yuzu and Brian have a much more professional relationship, although I do think they have their own unique bond just like Yuzu had with Javi despite the fact that they didn't really hang out outside the rink. Is it the same type of bond that Brian had with Javi or that Yuzu has with Ghislain? Probably not. Does it need to be? Not really, so long as everyone is professional and keeps the skaters best interest in mind.

On Asian Winter Games, it involves only Asian countries but I remember being in Korea one summer where they held the summer version called Asian Games. I don’t know who Japan usually sends to these games but I’m guessing it tends to be their slightly lower level skaters, I think in 2017 however both Shoma and Satoko were assigned since the Winter Games were held in Japan that year and Japan likely wanted to have their top athletes participate. I remember the timing was VERY close to 4CC that year which was the Olympic test event. I believe winter and summer games are held every 4 years so next winter games I think is 2021, but I don’t expect the top tier skaters to attend unless it’s in Japan again as it’s so close to 4CC and Worlds.

If that was an advantage I'd hate to think of what a disadvantage looks like.

I think singing Happy Birthday in a relaxed show setting is completely fine, but during a competition is another thing altogether. You have to be respectful to the skaters who are trying to concentrate, whether it be Yuzu or any other competitor. Add to that these competitions are timed to the minute, the song may be short but if it delays the next competitor or interferes with people concentrating on their scores, skating, or judging then I think the singing could be more disruptive than it would be celebratory (plus, some people just don't care for that type of thing - I certainly don't like to be sung to in public). Like someone said, timing and place is key and I think singing would only be appropriate after the competition has concluded (either victory ceremony when they're doing a victory lap, or gala as I mentioned earlier).

I think in Marseille fans sang happy birthday after one of the practice sessions, but I think it happened to fall on his actual birthday. I think the other alternative is to just wait until the gala to sing happy birthday, and maybe just hold up a birthday sign during competition.