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Continuing on the sports theme...

Continuing with the theme of sports, today I went with Ms Kitamura to the rehearsal of Fantasy on Ice 2015, an ice skating exhibition/show-thing that's being held in four cities across Japan. The list of stars is actually...really good.
Shoma Uno- winner of the 2015 Junior World Championships
Javier Fernandez- winner of the 2015 World Championships
Yuzuru Hanyu- gold medal winner in men's singles at Sochi
Evgeni Plushenko- speaks for himself
Johnny Weir- two-time Olympian who also speaks for himself...
(And there were more, these were just the names I recognized!)

Gave me an idea of how professional figure skaters support themselves though...and retired skaters...


We were actually at this rink for a really long time. Each group of skaters had practices of 50 minutes each and there were...five groups. And of course the athlete that Ms Nishimura wanted to interview was in the last group, which didn't finish until 3pm.


One of the younger Japanese skaters...Marin Honda.


A blurry photo of Shoma Uno.


Some weird Russian duo that did acrobatic pair skating...there was another woman with hula hoops and a guy that did backflips on his skates...

And then there was Johnny Weir who I was suddenly told I could ask some questions to after his practice was over.


Even though Weir never medaled (and some thought he should have) he's really active in the fashion world and outspoken about LGBT issues. He's also quite popular in Japan. I read on a fan blog, as I was trying to think of what to ask him, that fans met him at Narita and gave him gifts (and they also wear green rings to match the color of his eyes...)


And here's a brief video of him skating during practice.

I ended up interviewing him briefly (and babbling I'm sure; no clue how seriously he took me) about his impressions of Kanazawa (beautiful and hot) and what he wants his fans to take away from the show and his performance (he wants them to come away feeling something--anything--rather than indifference). I typed up his answers in Japanese and gave them to Ms Kitamura for her to use in her article should she have the space and/or desire. It's definitely difficult to think of new and unique questions to ask athletes: I'm sure they get similar things wherever they go. But what can you do with three minutes, really? I've yet to find out.
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