Yuzuru Hanyu is My Emergency Contact

Yesterday was my birthday.

And while I made the effort to be a “real” person by making “real” plans with “real” people, Mother Nature decided I would have more fun alone in my apartment with Schweethart, Arima and Yuzu. I couldn’t argue with her. Freezing rain is not fun…and very real. (See how that works?) Even Yuzu doesn’t want anything to do with black ice.

And he loves him some ice…

The day as a whole was touch and go. It started when I got on Facebook and saw a Fanyu posting of a tiny stick person lying face down on the ground in a puddle of his own tears. The caption? Sad news. Lorando Muffin’s channel has been deleted from YouTube. [broken heart emoji] This is soooooo unfair and incomprehensible.  

Time to back up.

Lorando Muffin (whose name is either fake or a dare given to–and won by–his/her parents) is the Steven Spielberg of Yuzu YouTube videos. Yes, much of Lorando’s content can be found elsewhere, but Lorando posts everything in 1080 HD with clear and reliable English subtitles, having often cut out every shot that doesn’t include at least one Yuzu body part. And while you don’t HAVE to know everything Yuzu is saying to appreciate the video, and you don’t HAVE to cut out the 4 seconds that the feed accidentally switched from Yuzu’s shoulder to a certain other figure skater’s warm-up (actually, you do), you DO have to have Yuzu in HD. Lorando makes that happen. Lorando is the Fanyu’s dealer. The Muffin gets us the good stuff.

But back to the weeping stick figure who has lost all his will to live. YouTube decided the best way to wish me a happy birthday was to take away a significant amount of my Yuzphine. (That didn’t land.) CocHanyu? (Still no.) Yuzuana (Ok. That one’s pretty funny.) It was reminiscent of the Autumn Classic Canada live-stream debacle, but I had a feeling that this time a lone, heroic, Japanese fan emailing YouTube and asking, “Please sir, can I have my Yuzu channel back?” wasn’t going to do the trick.

The best part, as usual, were the Fanyu reactions. We had the “nooooooooo”s and the “whyyyyyyy”s and the weeping kitty cat stickers, but the best was the person who immediately responded with, “Where’s Yuzu?” While I know they just happened to be hopping on to an active thread to ask if Yuzu had arrived in Moscow for his competition that weekend, I like to think they were a) worried that YouTube had deleted YUZU or b) hoping Yuzu was going to go to YouTube and do something about this injustice. You tell ‘em Yuzuru! We just want to watch you skate in a circle in 1080 HD. Who is that really hurting?

I told my sister I was bummed that my birthday was going to go down in infamy for the Fanyus: MuffinMistice Day. (None of this is landing.) She said that instead I should look at it as possibly the day the Yuzu Speakeasy was created. And, in some ways, she was RIGHT.

We all know how I feel about Yuzu and his hot chocolate making video. (If you don’t, you haven’t been paying attention.) In fact, I recently forced–I mean honored–Cactus by letting him watch it. A couple minutes in, my sister (who was also there despite me making her leave her bucket of chicken in the car) looked casually to Cactus and stated, “You do realize you’re watching a video of her honeymoon.” That pretty much sums it up.

Anyway, after the loss of the Muffin, someone posted a bunch of links to brand new, just released that day–my birthday–videos of Yuzu making new Ghana hot chocolate commercials. Happy. Birthday. To. Me.

YouTube taketh away and YouTube giveth…until YouTube taketh away again like the two-bit tease that it is.

So when Mother Nature brought black ice instead of cream cheese gimbap to the party, I wasn’t completely bummed. I simply went to the grocery, bought a Ghana chocolate bar (unfortunately from Korea, not Japan…and we alllllll know that nothing from Korea can be better than something from Japan; right Chansung?) and went home to spend my birthday watching Yuzu make hot chocolate while I made the same (albeit Korean) hot chocolate and then we shared said hot chocolate before moving on to the whisk, earphone and sleeping bag portion of the night.  

Oh!  And don’t forget the gloves.

In fact, Yuzu didn’t forget the gloves. Yuzu wears a very specific type of gloves which you can only get from the gift shop at the ice rink where he trained in Sendai. They are not easy to get. After a few emails in Japanese, a couple eBay inquiries and some visits to the Japanese Embassy, I finally tracked down a pair. They arrived a few days before my birthday. When I texted my sister that they had arrived, she replied, “Figures Yuzu would send the first gift.” Indeed. So I saved them to open on my birthday. Heading home that night, I told Cactus I was going to spend the evening drinking hot chocolate and opening my gloves from Yuzu. 

“Uhhhhhhhh.  I think you mean opening your Yuzu gloves.” he corrected.

“Is that what I mean?” I asked slyly.  

In fact, earlier that day I was filling out a questionnaire for a therapist I’m going to start seeing…(“At last! At last!” you exclaim. Don’t get excited. Not for that.)…and I texted Cactus a picture of the section which said, “Please list additional people living in your home” along with the question, “Do I need to list Yuzu?” Cactus said I needed to list Schweethart. I told him I would list Schweethart…and Arima, Kaneki, Obi-Wan Kenobi and, of course, Yuzuru Hanyu. 

“Well. That’s good. At least your therapist will know what she’s getting into…” he replied.

I don’t know. I’m not sure any questionnaire could fully prepare you…but I guess it’s a start.