The Italian version is here.

I visited some beautiful places in Japan (in Italian, with photos: 1 and 2). It wasn’t for those places, though, that I made the trip. It was for Echoes of Life. Everything else was an afterthought, because after deciding to spend that money on plane tickets and accept the tiredness that came with a 15-hour trip, my friend and I chose to spend a few days there. But that was a decision made after we had won the first ticket, not the reason that pushed us to leave.

After we won the first ticket. Every fanyu knows that buying a ticket for a Yuzuru Hanyu show is not easy. The demand is so high that tickets are sold by lottery. If you don’t win the lottery, you can’t buy the ticket.

I have always ignored the other lotteries. I don’t think there was an option for international fans to participate at the one for Prologue, but I definitely ignored the ones for Gift, Re_Pray, and all the editions of Notte stellata. Instead, I lost the lotteries for Echoes of Life in Saitama, then I lost the ones for Echoes of Life in Hiroshima, and finally, in the first lottery, I won the ticket for February 9th in Chiba. I won, but I should say we won, because all the practical matters were handled by my friend, who also advanced the money for the ticket, and who helped me register my cell phone, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. At that point we started participating in the lotteries for the 7th, separately, to increase our chances of winning. In the second lottery, I won the ticket for the 7th, but she failed all the lotteries and of the 7th she only has the stories of me and the other people who entered the arena. And she wasn’t the only person I know who won only one ticket. In Chiba I met with four Italians. Only one of them managed to attend both shows, one attended only the show on the 9th, two attended the show on the 7th live and the show on the 9th from the cinema. For those who won only one ticket, it would have been better to win the ticket for the show on the 7th, since liveviewing was available for the 9th.

I went to the LaLa Arena pretty early both days. Fear of getting lost, sure, there was a little of that too, because it was the first time I was moving alone, even if I had pushed the doubts to the back of my mind as something irrational. But even irrational fears can make themselves felt. I never remember my dreams, and yet on the night between the 6th and the 7th I dreamed that a few days after arriving in Japan, for some reason I had returned briefly to Italy (briefly? with all the time needed for the flight? Ok it was a dream, and dreams aren’t rational), on the evening of the 6th I had suddenly realized that the next day there would be the show, and I had desperately started looking for a way to return to Japan in time. After a dream like that, could I be calm? I had to get to the arena as soon as possible.

There it was, in all its glory. It was a beautiful sunny day, the arena could be seen in the distance from the subway exit, and when I arrived there were very few people around. But I was there. I was there, and in a few hours the show would be held.

It wouldn’t have been the first time I saw Yuzu live. I had already seen him in 2019, at the Grand Prix Final in Turin. Short program on Thursday 5th, official rehearsals on Friday 6th (the ones where he tried the 4A, I left those rehearsals terrified), free program on Saturday 7th. No gala for me, I was at work that day. Yuzu was wonderful, despite the mistakes, and the judges, who deserved to be slapped. I had already seen Yuzu in 2019, so I knew, within certain limits, what effect he could have. Because Yuzu is not a skater like the others.

I watched all the competitions in Turin. 48 skaters or pairs of skaters between juniors and seniors. In the junior category there were several promising skaters, some would have won important medals. In the senior category eight skaters – nine counting Hanyu – now have at least one Olympic medal around their necks, all but one have won at least one medal in a senior ISU Championship. I had watched all the warm-ups, two competition segments for four specialties in two different categories, a total of 16 warm-ups. And I had watched the Friday practices. I don’t remember what else I watched besides the men’s practice, but I did watch some other practices. I watched all the skaters. Someone would try an element of the program, be it a jump or a sequence of steps, and in that moment I would look at him/her/them, then I would shift my attention to someone else and look at him/her/them. Except when the senior men were on the rink.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. There was simply only one skater on the ice for me. My eyes were glued to him, whether he was trying a jump or drinking from his water bottle, I couldn’t look away. I was several meters away, last row of the second level, according to the official website the second level is over 4 meters high, the third is 8. I was far enough away that I couldn’t throw my Winnie the Pooh onto the ice, I know it for sure because someone picked up my gifts from where they had fallen and threw them in turn, thus making them reach the ice. And yet Yuzu was magnetic, despite the distance, despite the disappointment of the missed combination in the short program, despite everything. He was him, the others were background, as were the judges and everything around us.

The show on the 7th wouldn’t have been the first time I saw Yuzu live. And this time there wouldn’t have been any anger for marks awarded without any respect for the rules. The nightmare had been just a nightmare, and I was in Japan, in front of the arena I don’t know how many hours before the show started. A pity the absence of the beautiful posters that I saw photographed by some fanyu in front of the other arenas, here there was only a giant screen with the official poster.

I had organized myself for the meeting with the fandom by bringing with me five copies of Sette containing the interview with Yuzu by Costanza Rizzacasa d’Orsogna, and three packages of Italian chocolates.

They weren’t enough. I really had no idea how overwhelming the fanyus could be. The festive atmosphere in front of the arena was magnificent. I don’t know how many gifts I received, and many gifts were expensive, or took time to prepare, or both. These are the gifts that arrived home. What I could eat is missing, because I ate it while I was still in Japan, otherwise I would have had to buy an extra suitcase for the return trip.

I chatted with some fans, and I have no idea who they are or how to contact them, it was just a one-day meeting, but it was a wonderful day. I met a Japanese lady who lives in Italy, who I had already met a couple of times, and I met the PlanetHanyu group.

https://twitter.com/theplanethanyu/status/1887741860912775634

A mandatory stop was the merchandising. Two of the Italians had not signed up for the lottery, the two who had signed up drew very high numbers, over 4,000, and for just one day, with over 5,000 people who had applied to go and buy the merchandising.

I… I really took the wild card. I had no idea what I was doing, when someone on the staff asked me something I showed them my cell phone, with the trust that he or she would know what to do. Which screen did they want to see? I had no idea, I tried everything, and they were there patient, available, doing their best to help me.

I had already ordered the Storybook from Italy, and I had also already read it, several times because I wanted to understand well. And besides, during the flight, and the evenings in the hotel, I read The Trouble with Being Born by Emil Cioran. I wanted to understand as much as possible.

I still want to understand. In the future I will try to read Underwater Philosophy by Rei Nagai. I had decided to buy it, if I could find it when I went to Japan, and when I had it in my hands in the bookstore I decided to wait and I put it back on the shelf. I made a different attempt, because Google lens works better if I have a screen at my disposal instead of a book page, with the inevitable deformations of the kanji due to the fact that the page is not flat.

Back at the hotel I opened a new Amazon account. From Japan. This means that I can now buy Japanese books and magazines in digital version. It is a deliberate choice. There are countless magazines that contain a feature on Yuzu, or an interview with him, but international shipping costs a lot. More than the magazine itself. As interesting as the magazines may be, there is a limit to how much I can spend. But, without the unnecessary expenses, I have already bought several magazines, and also Nagai’s book. We are talking about a book of philosophy, so not an easy book to read, of a culture different from mine, probably there are concepts that for a Japanese are normal and that are foreign to me, and the translation will be that of an automatic translator, so it will be poor. Will I understand something? I don’t know, I only know that I want to try to read the book. If I will read it to the end, I will find out in the future.

Nagai’s book aside, and Storybook aside, because that’s where I started from, I already had some of the merchandising because a friend who had been to Echoes of Life in Saitama had bought it for me. So I only had to buy something for myself, and something that several friends had asked me for, including the one who had bought it for me in December, because apparently there’s always something more to buy, and shipping costs are high. So on the 7th I got in line to shop, with my number 36. Yes, I really did pick 36. I bought a few things, not even that many because most of the requests were made after, and I went back to the group. And that same day I discovered that my personal merchandising wasn’t enough. One of the things I had said to myself, looking at the official website, was that I didn’t need the acrylic stands.

Really, what do I do with a little acrylic figure to put on a shelf? I already had one, but that one had arrived by itself, as an insert in the GOAT calendar. I hadn’t exactly bought it: if it hadn’t been in the calendar, nothing would have changed for me. The calendar was what I wanted. Except that that evening, while the other Italians and I were on the subway heading to the hotel, a fanyu approached us. Between Echoes of Life bags, a Gift jacket (not me), the Gift neck warmer and Winnie the Pooh and various gadgets hanging from our clothes and bags, it was clear that we were fanyu. That fanyu gave us each a door and disappeared down the stairs, while we stood there looking at each other in amazement.

I had a door, what was I supposed to do? I had signed up for the merchandising lottery for the 9th too, I had the 1,700 and something, so much so that I didn’t find a bag that a friend asked me because it was already sold out. However, I bought my acrylic stand model B.

I took the photo after receiving permission from the staff.

I thought I was okay. Except that after I went to the merchandising, and before entering the arena, another fanyu gave me the capsule containing the algae. What was I supposed to do? On the 11th, in Kyoto, I went to the cinema, and since the acrylic stand model C was sold out, I bought the model A.

And then… well, there were the clear files. I know, the clear files were also at the arena, but I didn’t buy them at the arena. The sales counter at the arena was well organized. Next to each employee there was a complete list of merchandise, with photos and prices, so no matter what language we spoke, we just had to point to the item and say with our fingers how many copies we wanted of that item. Just for the t-shirts and the hoodies (I didn’t buy any hoodie) we also had to specify the size. The merchandise was in numerous boxes stacked behind the employees, so I didn’t see it. At the cinema, however, it was on display, the clear files were nice, and I ended up buying both sets. And the postcards too. I couldn’t buy the clear files binder (although between the clear files I bought and the ones the fanyus me as gifts, I have quite a few by now) because the binder wasn’t there. Anyway, it will arrive, in the order I made from home. Because I had to order the official book. I buy all the official books. So, while I was there to place the order, I also ordered the clear files binder. And also the book cover and the book box. I would have had to pay the shipping costs anyway.

At a certain point I decided it was time to stop, especially when I went into some bookstore, otherwise I would have had to buy another suitcase. I already had to bring an extra bag on the plane as hand luggage, in addition to my personal handbag. And I left a pair of shoes in Kyoto. They were old. Comfortable, but used to the point of I had almost destroyed them, so I left Italy with the knowledge that, if necessary, those shoes would remain in Japan. They remained in the wastebasket of the hotel in Kyoto. Only later did I learn that of the other Italian women, one had left a pair of shoes in the wastebasket of her hotel in Tokyo, the other in Sendai. The others chose to buy an extra suitcase.

The Season Photobook is the last one, the one for the 2023-24 season, I had already bought the others, but how many other books have I seen? How many have I not bought because I didn’t have enough space in my suitcase? Not surprisingly, I bought the Irene gloves. I bought all the Hochi issues, even if for space reasons only the page with Yuzu arrived in Italy. I bought the Gift DVD in Sendai, the Prologue one, which I hadn’t been able to find, I ordered on Amazon and had it sent to my hotel in Kyoto. I wanted to buy the Mirrorball for years, so a visit to the Phiten shop in front of the arena was inevitable. And since I was already there, I also bought a pair of socks.

Am I done shopping? Of course not. I’m done shopping in Japan, but I can also shop from Italy, it’s year that I’m doing shopping from Italy, and now that I have my account I plan to buy the next issue of S-Style in digital version, and the DVD of Notte stellata 2024 that has already been announced. The program booklet for this year, and the official book for last year, will be given to me by a friend who bought them a few days ago, when she was in Sendai for Notte stellata. As for the rest, we’ll see what they’ll publish.

On February 11th, after seeing both shows live, and knowing that I would be returning home on the 16th and would have the Beyond Live archive at my disposal for a week, my friend and I went to the movies.

Why?

Because we had to see the show again, because it wasn’t enough. She had seen one, I had seen two, but it wasn’t enough. Even though we had known the story since December, because we had seen the Saitama and Hiroshima shows. Every show is a different show. The execution changes, and this is inevitable when it comes to performing arts, and if what is performed is at the limit of the performer’s abilities (not because the performer is not up to it, because no one else could do what Yuzu did, but because what was planned is very difficult), the risk of error is high. This adds tension. But he also changes the interpretation. Some parts are improvised, as Yuzu himself explained, others are modified by choice. This is the same moment in Hymn of the Soul, the first day of Saitama and the second of Chiba, and even if the trajectory of the skating is the same, the two positions are deliberately different.

Before Aqua’s Journey Yuzu skates back and forth on the rink. The path is straight, sometimes skating forward, sometimes skating backward. And it’s different every day. There are so many details that change, which is obvious when you watch two different shows in a short amount of time. Not to mention that a new viewing allows you to appreciate many more details.

In the cinema it’s different from home, and not just because there’s a big screen. There’s a party atmosphere that, if it’s not exactly that of the arena (also because it was a delayed viewing, there was no uncertainty about how the show would unfold, we all knew that the jumps wouldn’t create problems), was still beautiful. That was a moment of joy for everyone. We also did the choreography of Let Me Entertain You at the cinema (actually I also did it when I was at home alone, but in company it’s more fun).

But the cinema is not the arena. I wrote that I took the best card in the deck. Before flying to Japan I drew a heart with cranes and took a picture of it, and from this photo I had a banner made. It wasn’t big, only 50 centimeters on each side, because I didn’t want to risk disturbing my neighbors.

It was inevitable that I would do so, since Yuzu likes to look at the audience’s banners. And apparently the banner was useful to me too, because it helped me find myself inside the video.

Now I can say I’m in the same photo with Yuzu. And a few hundred other people. Thousands, if we think about how many of us were in the arena.

Here is the 9th. The day I was furthest away, because my ticket for the 7th was for the arena. The first day I didn’t have my banner but the Italian group‘s, because that day I was the one closest to the rink. Second row. On both days I was on the left side looking at the big screen, and I’m a little sad, because I would have liked to see Utai IV: Reawakening from the other side at least once, but with the luck I had I can’t complain.

Yuzu said he did his best to give everyone a unique experience, and that’s true. I’ve been to two different seats, I can only speak for those two seats, but it’s true that what you see changes, and that in each case it’s an extraordinary experience. From the second row I was very close to the ice, even though there is still the black barrier that you see in the screenshot, and there is the setup around the rink that keeps a bit of distance.

I took these photos on the 7th, just getting close to the barrier that separated me from the rink. From my seat I also tried to photograph the doors above, I would have liked to take a nice photo to upload to Wikipedia, but the floodlights made photos very difficult.

As we know from the newspapers (and from the fact that people who wanted to buy tickets failed to do so), the show was sold out. The central level in front of me was clearly a reserved area for guests; tickets for those seats were not put on sale. There were also a few free seats immediately below, but only because there are cameras, and the cameramen needed space to work and an unobstructed view. For example, on the first day, even though I was very close to the ice, I was not able to see clearly the 4S in Chopin because right along that line of sight there was the head of a person taller than me. It happens, but it’s obvious that this wasn’t supposed to happen to the cameras.

This is the view I had on the 9th.

From the height I was at on 7th, I could see Yuzu’s expressions very well, at least when he was facing my direction, because the director always tries to get the best shot on the screen, but from the stands the point of view is only one, and to face all sides, Yuzu sometimes turns his back on us. On 9th, being higher up, I saw the projections on the ice that I hadn’t seen on 7th, and I think that those who were higher up than me saw the projections even better. One of the Italians who was higher up than me said that when Yuzu was behind the curtains, in the Piano collection, she saw him in transparency, and even though it wasn’t a direct view, the unusual effect was beautiful.

I was lateral. I was more or less in the positions indicated by the yellow stars, closer on the 7th, further but still close on the 9th. This means that on 7th, when Yuzu was to my right, if Elevenplay were also performing… I’m very sorry for them, but for me it was as if they weren’t there. My head turned to follow Yuzu. He was the sun, and I, like a sunflower, followed his movements. On 9th I was still lateral, but I was practically on the short side, and there were times that I had a perfect view of Yuzu and two of the Elevenplay behind him. And that view was extraordinary. At some moments their movements were in perfect unison, at others they were deliberately different, and the effect was remarkable. I hope that Yuzu manages to make a DVD of the tour, even if I know that obtaining the rights to everything is not easy. If he were to succeed, I would also like to have a camera just on the Elevenplay among the extras. For the extraordinary ballet they do in the last minutes before Chopin’s Ballade above all, but also for the rest, because their presence is important for the show. They enrich it. Although even when it was dark I watched Yuzu, who landed a perfect 4T+1Eu+3S combination both days. On the second day, towards the end of the warm-up, he also did a 2S. Deliberately double, I suppose he was focused on the body axis.

A program that I saw better from home is Hymn of the Soul. I didn’t realize it, but the cameras focuses on Yuzu, and on the screen we always see what he does. When it’s better to, the director moves from one camera to another. In the arena, when Yuzu is behind a door… he’s behind the door, and we have to wait for him to get to an area where we can see him. My impression is that from higher up you have a different perspective, that you can see him better, I know that on both days I appreciated that program live less than at home, and it’s a pity, because it’s a beautiful program.

I could have used the audio guide in English, but I chose not to. I am grateful to Yuzu for making the audioguide. If I had gone to the Saitama shows, it would have been very important, because it would have allowed me to understand the story. In Chiba, I already knew the story. I didn’t remember the exact sentences, but I knew what was happening. So I chose to listen to Yuzu’s voice, and to listen to all the sounds as best I could. And, without the effort of reading the subtitles of the videos like I did when I watched the shows on Beyond Live, I was able to better appreciate the videos. Videos that were made by top-notch professionals, and it shows.

That being said, how is the show?

Yuzu is everywhere. I wrote that he is the sun, and that like a sunflower I followed his movements. It’s true. He is very fast, I had already noticed this years ago in Turin, and he is everywhere. The other skaters seemed slow in comparison, they didn’t have the same ability to fill the rink. That ability remained. The rink is not of regular dimensions, I had noticed it even before Yuzu mentioned the detail, and I would like to know the exact measurements. But, regardless of the dimensions, that is his space, he is the absolute Lord of it. He is magnetic, impossible to take your eyes off him. Even if the show doesn’t start with him. It begins with the Elevenplay inside the capsules, and Yuzu who can be seen for a moment in the video, also inside a capsule, before his face is replaced by the dark screen that, with its writing, gives us the first information. And already there I started to hold my breath in surprise.

In person the colors are much more intense. At home you can’t tell. The colors are increasingly more intense, for the entire duration of the show. At certain moments around the central mega screen there is a red light that you can’t see from home, but which has a remarkable effect from the arena. In Danny Boy the predominant color is the pink of sakura, of life, but on Yuzu there is a green ray, the color of buds, of regeneration, which you can’t see in the videos. And at the beginning there isn’t just a black screen with white dots. Those dots are actually colored, the effect is much more vivid. And the writings aren’t just writings that appear on the monitor. There is a white laser that crosses the arena. It starts from the short side, flies over the entire rink, and arrives on the monitor on the other side. I turned my head to look at it. There is a spatiality that you can’t perceive on the two dimensions of a monitor, you can only experience it live.

That laser. The lights that come from different areas, and that sometimes expand on the audience. The Hanyu on the megascreen, with the detail of the hand, and at the same time the Hanyu in the capsule that makes the same gesture, multiplying it for the spectator in the arena, while the public at home can only see one of the two. The curtains that come down from above, and that are not always at the same height. The doors, whose location we can understand on the monitor thanks to what we see behind them, or the path taken by Yuzu after crossing them, but which in person really have a precise location in space, with the different distance that separates us from them each time. The chair.

Yes, the chair. I hadn’t noticed it at the show on December 7th in Saitama. I don’t know when I first became aware of its existence. This time I watched it, as it was slowly lowered from above, and delicately placed on the ice, first two feet and then the other two. It wasn’t just curiosity about how the technical elements fit into the environment, like when I noticed that the capsules containing the Elevenplays are brought in and out of the stage by a track on which they slide laterally.

The chair is put down slowly because it must not ruin the ice, of course. But it is also a tiptoe entrance, a delicately looking out into the room, so as not to disturb, because we are not sure of our place in the room. In life.

The first time Yuzu enters the room, he sits on the chair. Standing in front of him, the guide uses words to lead him on the path to finding answers to his questions. I had wondered why in the video Yuzu was sitting. Now I know. The room is the arena. We are Yuzu. He questions life, we question life. When Yuzu is in the room, before First Cry (technically the music is a fusion of the songs First Echo and Circulation, from the movie Wolf Children), there are many chairs suspended in the air. In the arena, most of the time, there is one chair suspended in the air. After First Cry, however, for the time of one video, the chair is lowered onto the ice. When Yuzu enters the room again, we no longer see him. We see the guide speaking, and the chair in the center of the rink, which is completely dark except for the ray of light shining on the chair. The chair is empty. But it is not really empty. We are the ones sitting on the chair. The guide is talking to us. This is strongly felt from the arena. We are the ones called into question by the guide, the ones who have to search for the meaning of our lives.

The spaces are carefully studied. Our gaze is guided in precise directions, involving us in the story, pushing us to be part of it. Expanding the narrative beyond the limits of the ice. Not only with the lights that sometimes illuminate part of the audience and create designs on people.

The narration is on the central mega screen. The guide is on the central mega screen. Yuzu goes through the door (a door that opens towards the inside of the room, while when he is on the rink he goes through all the doors in the opposite direction) wearing Nova’s costume, and a computer elaboration shows us the new version of the character, with the costume he will have when he enters the rink, in the center, under the central mega screen. The computer elaboration, however, takes place on the lateral giant screens. I don’t think I can explain it in words, the scene has to be seen to understand its power. If there had been only a different image on the screen… we would have simply had another shot, we would have had a narration of what was happening. But Yuzu really moved, he went from the central mega screen to the lateral ones, and then to the rink, and each time his body was reworked, first with the change of costume and then with the fact that he entered the rink in flesh and blood. In this way we followed his change in its entirety, we experienced it. It is not simple narration, it is something real, happening in front of our eyes.

The main difference between watching the show at home or in the arena is this. At home it’s cinema. Great cinema, that involves you, that makes you tremble, because you don’t know if Yuzu will really be able to do what he wants to do, and that shocks you, because the doubts he raises are real doubts, that torment us too, but from the arena it’s life. He’s there, in front of you, in front of us, and in a certain sense he is us. Emotionally the grip is much stronger. You’re there, in the arena, and you experience the atmosphere. You’re in space, you feel it. You feel it in the sounds that envelops you, in the rustle of clothes moved by the wind, in the air you breathe. There’s a whole world around you, with its depth, and with very intense colors. The sound is incredible.

Do we want to talk about the sound? The acoustic system is top notch, the music envelops you, enters you, but without ever becoming invasive. And along with the music there is the sound of the blades on the ice.

Other times I have heard the sound of blades on ice. In events I have attended live, competitions or shows, sometimes even on television. Here it is much louder, and it is beautiful. I have no idea if there are microphones pointed towards the rink, but hearing the sound of blades on ice is another nuance of music, because the sound is more intense when Yuzu is closer, it follows the rhythm of his movements. I know, in theory it is an obvious thing, necessarily the sound is linked to the type of movement made by the skaters. But Nova’s power is the power of sound, and it is with sound that he destroys, or gives life. In several moments Yuzu clearly played with sound, hitting the ice with force or performing fluid movements that produced harmony.

Harmony, yes. The beauty of what I saw was stunning. The beauty of the costumes that floated while he skated, the beauty of his movements. The fast ones, in which he reached everywhere, the slow ones, made as if they were the simplest thing in the world, while all his muscles had to work at maximum for the effort, screaming at him to hurry up, to hurry up, to finish that gesture because they couldn’t take it anymore from the effort of maintaining that invisible tension, and he made us admire every gesture in all its beauty. The softness, the fluidity. Liquid gold, a commentator once said to try to make people understand how incredible, how perfect, his gestures were. From home you can see them, but it’s not the same thing, because the camera changes. From home you can see many details better, you don’t see the continuity, the flow from one movement to another, from one place to another. Otherworldly.

Each program is different from the other, each has its own individuality. It should always be like this, but how many times do skaters always skate the same program, even with different music, because it’s the only thing they know how to do? Yuzu doesn’t. The programs are alive, each of them is unique, a besti squat in Utai IV: Reawakening is not like a besti squat in Aqua’s journey (one of the two days I had a perfect vision of Yuzu’s perfect position, to the point that I was left breathless by the beauty of that moment). They cannot be confused. If we saw them without being able to hear the music, performed with the same training suit and not the different costumes, we would still recognize them. Different, but all fundamental and woven together in a way that they are telling a single story.

And then there are the jumps. Yuzu uses them to tell his story. He already did it when he was competing, I remember well the explanations of why in Ten to chi to he chose to perform a 3A+2T combination, with the second jump with his arms raised, and immediately after a 3Lo. Jumps can be also narration, sport is too. And jumps are capable of moving. In that Ten to chi to, the first time I saw it, I started crying on a jump, the simpler, the euler of the last combination, for the intensity of what I was experiencing. Because I was no longer watching a competition program, I was living it. And here the jumps are narration.

Delayed single loop. Delayed single axel. Triple loop. Double toe loop with his arms outstretched. Quadruple toe loop, landed in silence, with the music starting because he landed, and it doesn’t matter that for safety’s sake there’s someone checking when the music should start. On a narrative level it’s perfect. Triple axel. Everything perfect.

He made mistakes on his jumps a few times. Especially in Hiroshima. Bad days happen sometimes. In Chiba the only real mistake was a flip that should have been a triple and instead became a single, on the first of the two shows. In one of the encores, Let Me Entertain You, not during the narration. For the rest, in the two shows that I was so lucky to watch live, he always completed the expected rotations, and all the jumps would have deserved a positive GOE. A couple only a +2, all the others +5.

+5? Since when do you give marks to a show? Since when do you give marks to art? Art is either art or it isn’t. The jumps I saw, almost all of them, were perfection. They were a sporting gesture, and at the same time they were art. And that… you can even explain art if you want, assuming you can find the words, but above all you admire it. You live it. Yuzu jumped, and there was no way he could make a mistake. Every moment was pure harmony. There was no preparation, then take-off, then rotation in the air and then the landing, the normal gestures of an athlete. There were no different, separate technical movements. There was one unique movement. Yuzu merged with the music, flowed in space, hovered in the air, until he moved towards the cosmos and the cosmos in turn moved towards him, with their separation that had only been temporary, Yuzu and the cosmos were destined to meet again, and Yuzu returned to the ice. Paf. Perfection, as witnessed by the pure sound created by the movement of the blade on the ice. A ballet, with the two actors who had moved away and returned to reunite, because each could only be complete in the presence of the other.

I have seen so many skaters live over the years. Not only at the 2019 Turin final, but also on other occasions. At different times I have seen all the skaters who have stood on the Olympic podium in the men’s competition in the last edition. I have seen some other Olympic champion too. No one has ever come close to doing what Yuzu has done. None of them have ever come close to his abilities, not only interpretative, but also technical. And this was clear even in 2019. The others perform technical elements, what Hanyu presents is beyond the technical gesture. I do not understand how any judge could assign a score other than +5, when Hanyu has completed something perfectly. Hanyu has made mistakes in his career, he has never been the most consistent athlete in the world. But when he did what he was doing at the best of his abilities… you can’t not see it. A score other than +5 should have earned the person who assigned it an immediate disbarment from the judges’ register, because he was not able to understand what he had seen, much less evaluate it.

I’m probably forgetting a lot of things, and there are a lot of things I can’t express in words (especially not in English). I went to Japan because others organized the trip for me. I left Italy full of doubts, and I visited wonderful places. But the best moments, the reason I made the trip and what would be worth returning for in the future, are the two shows I saw live. As I wrote to a friend trying to convey my impressions of Echoes of Life, everything we see on the monitor, we see multiplied in person. The lights, the music, the sound of the blades, the depth of space, the possibility of seeing things that the camera doesn’t capture, the atmosphere of the arena… and then there’s him. Regal, magnetic, intense, heartbreaking, very fast, ethereal… Yuzu is Yuzu, and that’s it. On the screen he’s extraordinary. Then you see him live, and you realize that on the screen you didn’t perceive anything.