Yuzuru Hanyu is My Emergency Contact

Being a Fanyu is not for the faint of heart.

And I don’t mean in the “I can’t handle the criminally handsome Yuzu” kind of way.  

I mean in a logistics and stamina kind of way.

Let’s look at the superhuman skills the Fanyus must possess in order to watch Yuzu do his superhuman things. Also known as…

The Things We Do For Hanyuuuuuuuu.

Time Conversion Savant:

I’ve talked about it before. The whole, add a day, carry the one…of course, depending on what time zone you are in. Granted, if you live in a time zone which is just a couple hours different from the competition, your base value decreases. And if you happen to live in the SAME time zone where it is happening, I say to you, “WHY THE HECK ARE YOU WATCHING THIS ON TV?! GET YOURSELF TO THAT RINK!” But, for some of us, the time conversion can get quite complex. Many times I have found myself asking, “What DAY is this even actually happening for me?” And just when you think you’ve got your days and hours all converted, carried and landed…they go and throw Daylight Savings Time into the mix. Mercifully, there are Fanyus who create entire spreadsheets for guidance. Date and time countdowns are created, and suddenly your laptop looks like a NASA launch countdown screen. T-minus 16 hours to BLAZE.

Resource Archaeologist:

Now you know WHEN to watch Yuzu, but you don’t know WHERE. If time conversion was the single Axel, resource archaeology is easily a double. Time is time. No one owns it. Footage is another thing entirely. Footage originating in another country…okay, so maybe this is actually more like a triple Axel. This isn’t 90210 we’re talking about. You don’t just sit down on your couch with a bowl of popcorn, flip to the right TV channel and enjoy. This is a battle. A battle where you are way too on edge to consider eating popcorn. Days in advance, POSSIBLE links start to surface. And these aren’t www.watchyuzuhere.com links. These are long sequences of numbers and letters with no rhyme or reason. One number wrong, and you’re not watching the stream from that guy’s basement in China (again I say BLESS HIM). No, you’re looking straight into the sad eyes of the broken robot face or pixelated dinosaur which have become the universal signs of “NO YUZU FOR YOU.” The Fanyus don’t even pretend to have this all figured out. And that’s why the list grows and grows as you get closer to the competition. Your best hope is to gather them like Easter eggs and store them all away in a basket until the REAL hunt begins. And trust me, you’re gonna need them all…even the gross circus peanut textured ones.

Stream Jumper:

This isn’t nearly the nature-loving activity it sounds like. In fact, it’s quite sedentary. This aspect of Fanyuism calls for some serious nerves of steel. Once you’ve gathered all the POSSIBLE links, you need to organize them. For the last Japan Nationals, I had one document where I compiled all the options in chronological order. “The Draw will be on this geoblocked link, so I’ll need to use the VPN. The short program practice will be on this link (if Yuzu attends-we’ll get to that part later) and it doesn’t need the VPN. The short program is here, or here, or here, or here…or, when the time comes, maybe I’d have the best chance just using binoculars and looking out my window in the general direction of Japan.” But the real skill comes in juggling all these options at once. When the time approaches, you have to get them all open, pull the slot machine lever and pray that at least one will come up 3 cherry blossoms. But you can’t get lax, because at any moment, a stream can die…or at the very least, lag every three seconds…or cut away to a Japanese TV show rerun that looks like it was produced in 1984. This usually causes some type of swearing at your computer screen. “What the twizzle?! Yuzu is skating RIGHT NOW!”

I think Fanyus would be really great television directors. “Cut to stream 1, go back to stream 3, now 2, now 1, GO…GO…GO.” First, you have the stream of the backstage area, so you watch Yuzu off in a far corner as he walks through his program in an outfit that simply elicits the one word CloneMe text of “TSHIRT!” Then, he rolls up his mat and walks past the camera, and it’s time to switch to the next stream. After the competition, you cut to a different backstage stream to try to catch him being interviewed. It’s literally like chasing him down the hallway, yet you don’t feel like quite as much of a stalker…despite the fact that doing it in your pajamas from the comfort of your own home somehow feels a little creepier because at least he has the fighting chance to run from you if he knew you were actually there following him…in your pajamas. A recent backstage stream added the option for you to MOVE THE CAMERA YOURSELF. I don’t think the Fanyus can handle this type of freedom of technology. We could actually look back and forth as Yuzu paced in front of the camera. I don’t know if Yuzu was fully aware that this technology was in use while he was warming up (though I tend to believe that Yuzu knows exactly what is going on in his orbit at all times), but it eventually got to the point that it felt like he was messing with us. He would walk toward the camera…closer…closer…”ok, time to shift the camera a little in front of him to catch him” when…JUST KIDDING, he would take a sharp U-turn and go back the other direction. Once he started sprinting back and forth, it felt like you had advanced to the next level of the video game and if you didn’t keep Yuzu in the shot, you were going to be met with a sad “waa waa waaaa” and GAME OVER flashed up on the screen.  YOU LUZU.

Own Biggest Fan:

It seems trivial, but one of the strongest attributes of the Fanyu is the confidence that your calculations and sources are correct. From the moment Yuzu arrives for the competition, you live in a perpetual state of “Did I figure that right?” – “Am I missing something?” – “How am I going to mess this up?”. You’re afraid to go out into the world to accomplish anything. You’re afraid to turn off your VPN. You’re afraid to go to sleep. Setting alarms isn’t good enough. You need to be constantly plugged into the Fanyu hivemind. It’s almost as if you think there’s going to be an announcement: “Yuzu decided he wanted to go home early, so we’re going to skate the Free Program 8 hours ahead of schedule. Surprise!” Deep down, you know they won’t change the schedule that drastically, but what if you didn’t carry the one when you were doing your time conversion? Or what if you put the date in your calendar wrong? Best not to blink. Or, at the very least, if you do, it has to be a quick blink…not a long one like pre-Chopin Ballade No. 1. Ultimately, you just have to squeeze Pooh-san’s face and hope it all comes out alright. He trusts you.

Mind Reader:  

Even once the “official” schedule is made clear and you’ve done all your conversions and link saving, there is one critical component that can throw a curve ball. YUZU. (And we all know how much Yuzu likes 野球 [baseball].) When will Yuzu arrive at the venue? Will he go to the draw or use a proxy? Will he be at the first practice? Heck, sometimes it is mere days before the competition happens before you even know if he’ll be there AT ALL. And when it comes to guessing what Yuzu will do, there is no formula. This is why I now know how to recognize the words for “Where” and “When” in many languages thanks to the chat threads which gradually build in the frequency of these words streaming in from all around the world with the name “Yuzu” before or after them. The closer you get to the competition starting, the more the number of question and exclamation marks increase. Once you’ve rounded to the crying emojis, you know someone didn’t get their VPN set up in advance. We’ve all been there…especially when Yuzu isn’t.

Archivist:

So you saw the draw, the practices, the competition, the press conferences and the exhibition. おめでとう[congratulations]! But did you reallllly see it ALL? And, most importantly, how can you see it again and again…and again? Enter the YouTube playlist. But, as we’ve discussed, YouTube can be a two-bit tease. One second the video is there, the next second, you’re staring at the dreaded three dot gray square. Nothing sinks a heart quite like that icon. Translation: There was a video that you loved. It is now gone. But good luck guessing which one it was. Enter screen-grab. The only guarantee that the video of Yuzu saying he sometimes wears his Olympic medals around the house for no reason will be with you forever. But, let me tell you, this is a dangerous rabbit hole. Because once you’ve screen-grabbed one…you start to feel the need to screen grab them alllllllll. (And then, before you know it, you’re getting out of bed in the middle of the night because a new slow-mo angle of Blinding Lights has been posted and that is some serious, necessary content. SERIOUS.) Sure, that one video has been on YouTube for eight years without ever getting taken down, but suddenly you’re convinced it’s going to be taken down immediately and lost forever. Let’s face it. It’s not over until the external hard drive is full.

So excuse me while I go screen-grab a clip from 2012 of a blindfolded Yuzu busting a watermelon in half with a giant stick. 

Because it could be gone in a non-Chopin blink of the eye.