General Yuzuru Chat

[Kestrelz]

19 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

Let's not forget though, that he doesn't like pickles. 

Of course Pooh-san may.

What else does he not like? I am not a fan of pickles either but from some fans' comments it feels like he has a rather unusual taste in food

[BWOZWaltz]

On 6/14/2020 at 7:36 PM, sweetwater said:

Sorry for being off-current topic, but looks like Ice rink Sendai has been re-opened for the public, although the time for the public session is still shorter than before.

According to the OP, they put a notice for visitors which asks them:
-to avoid coming from other prefectures
-to avoid coming when they aren't feeling well
-to wear masks
They also set a disinfectant at the entrance and an acrylic plate at the reception to protect both their staff and visitors from droplets.
And, they have introduced a thermographic camera bought with the donation from Yuzu!

According to the OP, there was a plate hung from the camera that said, "this thermographic camera was introduced by the donation from Yuzuru Hanyu senshu."

 

ETA:

BTW, I was enjoying the sparkly stars sparkling beyond everyone's posts...

 

BTW2, didn't Tolkien set strict rules on translating LOTR? I heard that was why the Japanese translation wasn't easy to understand. I read it after I grew up and for work and found it very hard to get in the story, but I think it might have been easier if I read it in my childhood because when you are a child, you can read books imagining everything even if you don't understand every single word.

 

@TallyT this has been posted on page 5766 and @sweetwater has kindly translated it 

 

[sweetwater]

9 hours ago, rockstaryuzu said:

Isn't zunda sweet though? I suppose you could make a dessert soup. 

Zunda is mashed edamame or broad beans and not necessarily sweet. Zunda is known as an ingredient for sweets like zunda mochi and zunda shake, but it tastes well mixed in salty foods like rice crackers, tofu, spaghetti, sasakamaboko. (bamboo-leaf-shaped boiled fish paste, one of the famous Sendai foods)

 

8 hours ago, barbara said:

Okay, I give.  What is a "knob of crude salt"? Who sells (where would you get) salted cherries?  Salt pickled cherry blossoms?  What?  I kind of get Katsuo since it is similar to bonito.  And what is "sprinkle with bar mix (mincer)".  I don't, for a minute, claim to know very much about Japanese cooking (Chinese, yes; Korean, yes; Thai, yes; even Vietnamese.  And possibly sushi (like a California Roll).  The only things I recognize in this recipe are the potato and the onion.  I'm open to new tastes and the idea of cherry soup is appealing.  I'm just baffled with the terms.

Sorry for being late to reply.  The Japanese correspond to "knob of crude salt" must be 粗塩ふたつまみ, that means "two pinches of unrefined salt." As to salt pickled cherry blossom, this page may also help. I think you can buy it via Amazon JP, Rakuten, etc. It is salty but has a soft flavor of sakura, which I think is sweet but refreshing. "Sprinkle with bar mix (mincer)" =バーミックス（ミンサー）でなめらかになるまでかける means "puree the soup with a hand blender." In short, it is sakura flavored creamed potato soup. First, saute the onion with salt and butter, then add potatoes and half of the bonito stock. Once the potatoes are cooked, add the cherry blossoms after washing off its salt a bit to avoid making the soup too salty. After simmering the soup for a minute, puree it and dilute it with the rest of bonito stock. Then warm it and add some salt if you need it. You can also decorate it with chopped cherry blossoms (again, after washing off its salt.)

 

Sorry for OT

[SitTwizzle]

24 minutes ago, Kestrelz said:

What else does he not like? I am not a fan of pickles either but from some fans' comments it feels like he has a rather unusual taste in food

He doesn't like pepper. I think he said once he could have green pepper, but definitely not ripe ones. Once he took a hamburger, mistaking pepper with tomato, and he felt betrayed.

And he had an allergic reaction with an alcohol disinfectant for a test before a surgery, but I don't know if this reaction was to alcohol itself, or to another component of the disinfectant. In fact, though he doesn't go out much (or at all), I do suspect him to have occasionally accepted a little drop of wine or beer (but not to have ever been anywhere near ebriety).

 

@sweetwater Thank you for the recipe!

[fyere0]

28 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

He doesn't like pepper. I think he said once he could have green pepper, but definitely not ripe ones. Once he took a hamburger, mistaking pepper with tomato, and he felt betrayed.

And he had an allergic reaction with an alcohol disinfectant for a test before a surgery, but I don't know if this reaction was to alcohol itself, or to another component of the disinfectant. In fact, though he doesn't go out much (or at all), I do suspect him to have occasionally accepted a little drop of wine or beer (but not to have ever been anywhere near ebriety).

 

@sweetwater Thank you for the recipe!

 

He said he drank sake with his father when he came of age and he liked it, but got tipsy really easily, so he probably knows he's a lightweight and will never drink in public. 

[FlyingCamel]

1 hour ago, fyere0 said:

 

He said he drank sake with his father when he came of age and he liked it, but got tipsy really easily, so he probably knows he's a lightweight and will never drink in public. 

I wonder if he gets the asian flush when drinking alcohol!

Also now that you mention his father... I realised I don’t actually know a single thing about his dad? Yuzu hardly ever mentions him right? 

[sweetwater]

8 hours ago, Fay said:

Meanwhile, there’s some more food on the menu, apart from soups! Thanks, @cvdnce! 

 

Thank you for sharing! At first, I was amused by the idea of doing this because she feels good when hearing someone saying good things about Yuzu (so relatable,) but it was truly educational and energizing (and touching at moments ) Hope her dancers will be able to get together and dance again soon...

[micaelis]

19 minutes ago, FlyingCamel said:

Also now that you mention his father... I realised I don’t actually know a single thing about his dad? Yuzu hardly ever mentions him right? 

We know that his father was once a baseball player, but that is all we know, and we know that not from Yuzu but from Kurt Browning.  We don't know how high his father was, or even whether he was on the professional level, nor how long his father played.  We do know that Yuzu at one time contemplated being a baseball player.

 

On the general level of Yuzu and his family Yuzu has been very close-mouthed.  He protects their privacy assiduously and I think that is one reason why he is so much a hermit in Toronto.  He doesn't want his mother to become known to the general public and he knows that that could very easily happen in Toronto.  I am amazed that he appears to have managed to conceal where he lives in Sendai.  He doesn't want his home to become like Ice Rink Sendai has become, a very popular destination for tourists that is NOT in the official tourist guides.

 

I have a feeling that aside from his sense of patriotism he might actually prefer being in Toronto since when in public there he is still relatively unknown.  That is not the case in Japan where his face has got to be one of the two or three most recognized faces in Japan.  I doubt that there is any public figure in Japan who has had his or her face on the cover of magazines or in the pages of newspapers more than Yuzu, not to mention in interviews and documentaries on TV.

[Lunna]

3 часа назад, SitTwizzle сказал:

At 2015 GPF I think there were local skaters who were not competitors? And sometimes there are local synchro skaters.

Yes, there were local synchro skaters (but they were competitors), local ice dance (not competitors), Russian synchro skaters (which won in the final), I also think synchro skaters were in Gala in Finland cuz it's more popular there, but don't remember for sure. So yes, organizers usually add locals or smb fun from competitors. I think apart from medalists it's up to them to decide.

[sweetwater]

1 hour ago, FlyingCamel said:

Also now that you mention his father... I realised I don’t actually know a single thing about his dad? Yuzu hardly ever mentions him right? 

He often mentions his mother, but he has shared many episodes with his father as well. I don't know his father's current position, but he used to teach math at a junior high school and was in charge of the baseball club of the school. So Yuzu's strong subject and favorite sport were also his father's. He used to help Yuzu as a trainer when Yuzu was younger and recommended Phiten to Yuzu. He also helped Yuzu in deciding to take part in The Magnificent Nine by reading the book it was based on together and discussing how Yuzu would be able to contribute to Sendai by taking on the roll. I think I read somewhere that Yuzu brought a birthday present his father gave him to his first international competition, but I am not sure about this episode. I guess Yuzu is very close to his father as well.

[barbara]

4 hours ago, Kestrelz said:

What else does he not like? I am not a fan of pickles either but from some fans' comments it feels like he has a rather unusual taste in food

Pickles! I don't blame him for not liking pickles. Okay on their own, but I, too, feel betrayed when they appear on a cheeseburger.  And it's standard practice to put them on a burger here so I have to pick them all off.  Of course, what goes on a burger varies around the country.  People expect mustard on them in the south and that's just burger blasphemy.  I think Yuzu has fairly normal tastes in food, for someone raised in Japan.  If it sounds unusual to me, it's probably because it's not something I grew up eating.

[SuzyQ]

1 時間前, sweetwaterさんが言いました:

He often mentions his mother, but he has shared many episodes with his father as well. I don't know his father's current position, but he used to teach math at a junior high school and was in charge of the baseball club of the school. So Yuzu's strong subject and favorite sport were also his father's. He used to help Yuzu as a trainer when Yuzu was younger and recommended Phiten to Yuzu. He also helped Yuzu in deciding to take part in The Magnificent Nine by reading the book it was based on together and discussing how Yuzu would be able to contribute to Sendai by taking on the roll. I think I read somewhere that Yuzu brought a birthday present his father gave him to his first international competition, but I am not sure about this episode. I guess Yuzu is very close to his father as well.

 

I read somewhere last year that his father is a principal of a junior high school in Sendai.  I thought he was a vice principal, so probably he has been promoted.

And, I cannot precisely remember, but didn't Yuzuru visit the junior high school where his father was working some time ago?  I think it was aired.  Sorry, not sure.

 

[barbara]

8 hours ago, memae said:

 

I found a few  pickling recipes from Googling. It seems like you salt them first to cure them, then you either submerge them in ume plum vinegar and soak them before drying them out and storing them in salt or you can store them in the vinegar - the best way to preserve the colour is to store them dry in the salt (after pickling them in the vinegar for a couple of days). So I guess they have a floral but salty and tart flavour. 

Thank you.  Salting has been great for preserving all varieties of foods forever - but I guess I never thought I'd want to preserve a cherry in salt.  I suppose if you have an abundance of them and need to preserve them for decades (so turning them into preserves or jam isn't good enough), that would be the way to go.  Does preserving them in salt do something in particular to the flavor that remains after the cherries have been rinsed off?

[barbara]

2 hours ago, FlyingCamel said:

I wonder if he gets the asian flush when drinking alcohol!

Also now that you mention his father... I realised I don’t actually know a single thing about his dad? Yuzu hardly ever mentions him right? 

And he never gives details bout his sister, either.  I think that the most positive thing that has come out of the quarantine in Japan (and everywhere) is that this has been an opportunity for Yuzu to spend time with all his family.  It must be very comforting for him to be spending such an anxious time with the people who mean the most to him.

[rockstaryuzu]

47 minutes ago, barbara said:

Pickles! I don't blame him for not liking pickles. Okay on their own, but I, too, feel betrayed when they appear on a cheeseburger.  And it's standard practice to put them on a burger here so I have to pick them all off.  Of course, what goes on a burger varies around the country.  People expect mustard on them in the south and that's just burger blasphemy.  I think Yuzu has fairly normal tastes in food, for someone raised in Japan.  If it sounds unusual to me, it's probably because it's not something I grew up eating.

Oh no! I'm firmly in the mustard and pickles camp and I can't stand cheese on a burger! Does this mean we can't be friends anymore ? 

 

The whole Hanyu family must be pretty great people to be willing to support Yuzu in his wild medal chase for so long. They've sacrificed a LOT. Not every family would do so much. 

 

That being said, I always think of that one interview with Yuzu's mom that I saw. I think was the interview with the Zigunerweissen costume design? Anyway, she said something like "I just wanted my son to keep busy, and Whoops! I had an Olympic athlete." i.e. even she was surprised...Kids! What are ya gonna do? Shouganai.