Fanzine

[C-Fan]

Last night I was on the phone with Kim (tournament organizer for TSG3) for 58 minutes discussing footbag. Japanese footbag is so lucky to have people like him and Masa.

Anyway, TSG3 isn`t until April 30th, but we`ve already started tackling lots of the logistics early. I`m posting this to give you an idea of some of the things that go through my mind as I help organize tournaments in Japan.

1. Prizes. Pretty much just updated Kim on the sponsorship situation. Let him know that we got one more DVD sponsor (which I`m keeping secret until after the tourney, in case any TSG3 attendees read this), and my mom (my mom! ) made a prize for the best shredita at the tourney. We discussed what kind of prizes we still needed (t-shirts), what prizes we look set with (DVDs and custom 32s), and what my strategy/timetable should be for pestering sponsors.

2. Judging. TSG3 is mostly about the Shred30 contest, and those results are calculated based on the Worlds formula, so we don`t need judges for that. We are also running a Phat Combo contest though, so we DO need judges for that. We spent a long time discussing how many attempts we should give the competitors, with Kim initially suggesting 10 tries, and me suggesting 5 or 7. I think we will end up giving 7 tries.

Here was what went through my head, when I suggested fewer as opposed to more attempts.

a. If you haven`t hit a single Phat Combo in 7 tries, it`s not that likely you will hit it in your next 3.
b. For the sake of the audience (and any potential sponsors/first timers), 7 is a lot more watchable.
c. Challenging Japanese shredders to hit their combos under pressure will help them in the long-term. If they head to worlds and enter any events, I want them to do so with the confidence of `hey, I`ve done this before. I know I can hit my combo in 5 tries.`

We also had a long discussion about who would judge the event. At JFC2, I was the head judge for routines and Sick3, but mostly was there to just oversee how the 2 Japanese judges did. I was real happy with their performance judging routines, but they sometimes had problems identifying new combos on the fly. The problem with TSG3, is that most players who are very good at identifying tricks the first time they are hit, are also the players who are most likely to win the event, and therefore they should be competing and not judging. Kim offered to be one of the judges, and he still may be one, but I emphasized that if at all possible, I wanted to spread the judging experience amongst new players. Up until now, most of the Japanese tournaments have been run and judged by the same handful of players. Thinking about Japan`s tournament future, I thought it would be a good idea to bring in players who haven`t judged/organized in the past into the judging side, so they can gain some experience.

3. Restaurant sponsorship. Seriously, anytime you run a jam where 50 or more players attend, you have to try and use that to your advantage when talking to restaurants. The basic principle is that you have the potential to bring 50 paying customers to any restaurant in town, and that is a valuable playing card. Even if a restaurant gives you free drinks, 50 customers still means that they can turn a significant profit. Last year at TSG2 we got a minor discount, but this year we are hoping to get a bigger one, because the location of the event is nearer to more restaurants. I wish my Japanese were better and I lived in Tokyo so I could help out more with this aspect. While I`m at it, I also wish I were a foot taller and could dunk.

4. Rain spot The tournament is officially on a Saturday, and Kim has already reserved the gym for us. The plan is to have a big outdoor shred on Sunday... but what if it rains? I know that having a rain-location can be a major factor for me when deciding whether or not to attend a tournament. Since we have players from all over Japan coming (and one from Canada), I thought it was pretty important to get a rain location. I came up with a rather clever (if I do say so myself) solution, but Kim is a little squeamish about doing it, since it isn`t 100% kosher. But yeah, we`ll talk about it some more. Still, I`m glad we`re strongly looking into the matter.

5. Filming Takumi Takumi is the 15 year old prodigy who I`ve written about before. We`ve filmed some of his stuff and sent it to Eli with the idea that he might use some, but Takumi has gotten so much better since then, that we feel obliged to shoot some better stuff and send it instead. Eli`s vids don`t come out very frequently, but when they do, they are very very well produced and amongst the most viewed around the world. Because of this, I want to show off Takumi to the world, so taping him is a priority.

6. Getting the Japanese government to recognize footbag as an official sport We`re still in the early stages of figuring this one out, but we figure it`s an attainable goal. Probably just lots of red-tape and filling out forms, but footbag in Japan is definitely legit, with thriving scenes in several cities, and nationwide tournaments. The short-term goal of getting footbag recognized as an official sport over here, would be to get footbag taught in elementary schools, or at least as an option on PE teachers curriculae. The long term goal would be to set up the possibility of getting footbag into the Olympics at some point. Japan is especially critical in this respect, since one of the requirements for a sport to become Olympic, is that it be recognized as a sport on 4 continents. Australia, Europe, and America all have footbag scenes, but to date Japan is the only country in Asia that has a legit footbag scene.

[C-Fan]

Whoo! Guess who played footbag for the first time in 5 weeks this weekend!? If you guessed me, then you are right. If you come to Japan I`ll give you 2 cookies. One for guessing right, and one for coming to Japan.

So yeah, footbag kicks ass, it kinda sucked not playing for 5 weeks, and it rocked getting to play again. Man it felt good. I even managed to hit 15 (16...ish, explanation forthcoming) new tricks over 2 sessions, which is pretty good for me, considering I`m ancient, and was out of practice too.

Since I`m writing this in my blog, I feel obliged to make this as wordy and lengthy as possible. When you think `fanzine,` these adjectives probably spring to mind. Or maybe they slowly come to mind... chilling out on page 2 of footblogdom may make the recollections come slower.

Righty.

So on Friday, I was having trouble containing my excitement over the weekend. I had somehow managed to give my body 5 weeks of rest, and finally I`d get to play again. It was really pretty agonizing. I remember about a month ago James Risden posted footage of him hitting frontside toe blur real easily, and the second after watching it, I thought: `man, I bet I could hit that. I know I could hit that.` That alone almost got me back in the game, but I held steady. Then James posted fs quark, and that drove me nuts, cause I really really wanted to try out that set.

So Friday at work I couldn`t contain my energy anymore, so I decided I`d go to the gym to shoot some hoops to get my stamina up for the next day. Unfortunately, the gym was being set up for High School graduation, so that was a no-go. I decided to suck it up, and go get my lavers from my car and just do long tiltless strings in long pants. On my way out to the car, I saw that one of the school janitors was shovelling snow by himself. I decided I`d get my exercise by helping him for a bit. A bit turned into 2 hours, and after that I was too exhausted to play footbag. Probably a good thing. I head down to Tokyo on the bullet train after work, sleeping the whole way down. I pray that I will have enough energy to play the next day, and that the weather will be friendly.

Next entry: Saturday`s triumphant return. Gotta go teach now, so I`ll post in a few hours.

[C-Fan]

Saturday morning I woke up at 8:30, figured I had plenty of time before meeting everybody at 1 pm, so went back to sleep. I woke up at 12 pm, made this face: followed by this one: I threw on my clothes, checked the weather, then ran out the house to grab a quick and light lunch before meeting everybody at Yoyogi park. I was very aware that last time I was in Tokyo, a bunch of people showed at Yoyogi expecting me, and I bailed that day, so I didn`t want a replay. Luckily, I ate my lunch (veggie tempura) and finished with enough time to make it to the park on time. And just because I like using smiley faces, here`s my expression when I took a dump before going to the park:

Kim and X+Y are there already, and I`m happy to hear that Takumi will make it down too. Kim and I talk a little TSG3, but I want to play so badly that I`m in shorts in no time. It was warm enough to play outside, but there was a constant breeze which made it rather cold. I played most of the session wearing a long-sleeved shirt, gloves, and a hat. Still, I managed to warm-up enough to have a real good session. I think that was at least partly due to my excitement at playing again.

I warmed up by doing consecutive toe-stalls, all the time exclaiming: `my first adds in 5 weeks!` Then I did reps of butterfly-pdx mirage until I dropped and was like: `my first drop in 5 weeks!` I also periodically yelled `yay footbag!` throughout the session. God it felt so good just to play again, I missed it so much.

I only did a couple strings before I started trying out really hard tricks that I had been thinking about the last 5 weeks. To my surprise, I hit one of them pretty fast off the bat, but X+Y called me on it saying it was thin. Oddly enough, that made me happy on a couple levels. It didn`t feel that hard to hit the trick, so I knew I could hit it clean in the future. We also weren`t filming yet, so I was kinda relieved and motivated to hit it on video later. But mostly X+Y`s calling me out made me happy, because X+Y was able to call me on `the.` Up until recently, Japanese shredders would never call me on `the,` partially due to Japanese politeness, but mostly because they weren`t able to tell most of the time. I`ve spent a long time explaining to them that calling `the` is a good thing, and helps people get better. I usually use the expression `ai no muchi` which literally means `whip of love` to explain how calling `the` isn`t fun, but can help people get better. The fact that X+Y can spot my `the` and call me on it is a very good sign for Japanese freestyle. I think it`s becoming more common these days.

The 3 of us were relatively early, so we shred together for a while just loosely warming up. X+Y impresses me... his consistency has improved even since the last time. And he`s real serious about his flip, which is very cool. I`m having such a fun time just playing, that I almost forget all the stuff I wanted to try during my break. But then on one try, the bag comes my way, and *bam* frontside toe blur, first try. I had never even tried that set before, and I hit it first try! That felt so satisfying too, since I`d been wanting to try that for a month. When I first saw that Risden video, I just instinctually knew I could get it. I spend the rest of the afternoon playing around a lot with that set, which is lots of fun. It requires more strength than regular quantum, but the footwork is simpler. I hit fs toe blur-smog-pig. I hit fs tripwalk to WHAT?!? which isn`t a rewind, but feels kinda similar. I also hit fs quark and sealed it with a run including fs leg, and let out a huge roar of joy, Kenyon Martin style. Later that night I video reviewed it frame-by-frame and saw the torque dex was thin....... shit, gotta go. More in like, 2 hours.

[Dat]

Yay footbag!

[C-Fan]

Amen brother.

So yeah, upon later review I determined the fs quark was thin, but at the time I got real pumped up about it. After all, I had never hit wonton set before that day, so I was proud to have hit (or thought I had hit) a 7 add trick on the same day. After hitting FS quark, or possibly a diff hard wonton trick, I commented to Kim how I felt `complete` again. During my time off from footbag I kept busy with lots of things: snowboarded a bit, played lots of street fighter, went out drinking with friends, hit a hot spring, went on some dates, and overall still had fun, but I never got the same kind of rush that footbag gives me. You know, that complete, coursing-through-every-fiber-of-your-body rush of satisfaction and elation. I really missed that. I`m really happy I have a hobby that can give me that rush.

Other shredders slowly began to trickle in. Hearts, Keita, Takumi. I hit fs leg-fog-phoenix which was cool, cause it was my first time stepping out of fs leg, and also cause darkwalk is more natural for me than phoenix (so while I think darkwalk looks better than phoenix, and I`m not that entertained when I see others do phoenix, for me it`s a nice change). Keita played kinda average for him...I think he had trouble warming up. Still, predator like nothing, and his foot on atomic torque. He`d be sealing that trick so easily if he schooled his osis more. Hearts played well, both gyro mirages look real nice and his consistency was up. Takumi started off well, but couldn`t get long strings going because it was so cold. He still has a kid`s body, so there`s not much fat or muscle on his legs to keep him warm outside when playing. Towards the end of the session his legs were red, but he kept at it, cause he`s a trooper. He`s going to be a champion sooner than later.

It got pretty cold, so we quit around 6 or so, but I felt high for the entire evening cause I enjoyed playing so much. I think the fact that i had been away from the game so long helped make my mental game good. I was too happy about playing again to let the cold distract me or make me bitchy. I was kinda happy to end early too, cause I knew my legs would be achy the next day. I tried to balance out the impact on my legs by doing lots of flailing sets with my non-wonton leg. But thats natural, since my strong (only) quantum is the opposite of my strong atomic. That`s a little weird, that I can do atomic set 4 different ways (both leggy, both hippy), but I only have one quantum set. I should do something about that.

We decided to all hit a Chinese restaurant for dinner, and a couple footbaggers who showed up late also joined us, Sueh Kitchi and Morii. My 5 weeks off footbag also meant 5 weeks of not hanging out with the Tokyo crew, and hanging out with them after a fun session was almost as good as the session itself. I also give such big props to Takumi. Kid is 15, and spends his weekends hanging out with friends who are 10, 12 years older than him. That takes lots of bravery and maturity, and he`s super chill about it.

Since we started hanging out so early, I proposed we all go bowling, so that was our next stop. I wish I had drank more at dinner, cause then i would have had something to explain my horrid bowling. My first game was a 67 point disaster, devoid of a single strike or spare. X+Y and Takumi gave me competition... but everybody else did real well. Even us sucky players rolled with it. Mentally, I just kept telling myself: `I may suck at bowling, but check it: I`m hanging out with my cool friends in Tokyo on a Saturday night! And I hit fs quark today! (even though I didn`t... still, I hit some equally big stuff I was happy about)` My excuse for my bad performance, was that everybody else was doing so well, that my hand was tired from high-fiving everybody. Yeah... I also used a coin to determine which hand I would bowl with first. Unlike footbag, I try pretty hard to be flipsided in bowling, if nothing because its entertaining. In the second game, Kim gave Takumi and I some advice that really helped out. He told us to not look at the pins, but instead only focus on the floor of the start of the lane. Using this advice, I picked up a couple spares and strikes, and broke 100! Takumi got like 115. I was happy about the turn-around. Keita dominated as always...his first game he got 168. Why did I write this much about bowling? I probably should have just said: `we all had fun at bowling, then went home.` Thanks for reading.

I go home with Kim, and he goes online to have a meeting with the other members of the Nippon Footbag Assosiciation. At the same time, I go through all the footage of the day, logging the times when there`s something good. I feel a little disappointed about the FS Quark, but I vow to hit it clean on video soon. 2 other big moves from the day I review frame-by-frame, and they look good, so I`m happy about that. I watch `WHAT?!` frame by frame maybe 20 times, and I actually say `whaaaaa?` out loud a bunch of times. I mentally think of it as a ps egg, but it turns out it really is a same side butterfly symp reverse swirling opp toe. That`s a mouthful... I think WHAT?! sums it up well.

I watch a bunch of Michel Gondry music videos, and am blown away. The guy is a genius. But I don`t recommend watching his videos at 3 am in the morning when you are tired. It`s a mindf*ck.

Next day we decide to go to a real far away gym. We`d never been there, and the weather was nice in Yoyogi, but we decided it would be a good chance to scope out the location as a possible rain-spot, or for tournies. I pick up some sushi for lunch, we meet up with Takumi, then head out. My legs are pretty trashed from the day before, but I still think I can hit some stuff if I try.

We get to the gym, and it turns out to be real slippery. I do lots of mopping, but it doesn`t help much. People step on a wet towel before doing runs to help them get a grip. I don`t feel that bad once I warm up. I can`t go for long strings because of the surface, but I do manage some cool new tricks. I hit stepping grifter for the first time (like tombstone with the second dex reversed), then foot pixie grifter. I`m so surprised it comes up, I miss my seal. I hit pixie same grifter within a couple turns, so I figure I can hit and seal pixie grifter soon enough. I hit fs legbeater kick and flailing eclipse for the first time, both feel pretty cool.

Then I do something bad. Because I footed pixie grifter pretty easily, I got fixated on it, and just kept trying it repeatedly. I usually never do that, and advise people against it. But it really bugged me, so I stuck with it. I started thinking about the floor, and it psyched me out, so I went outside and skooled it. I probably wasted a good 40 minutes on that one dumb trick, and got real frustrated. But I kept thinking about Jorden`s blog where he recommended trying it til you hit it. I footed it a bunch of times, but I also kicked myself in the nuts a bunch, which frustrated me even more. Part of my problem was definitely that my weak pixie is so much weaker than my strong pixie. Then I thought, `hey, if I could do grifter on my weak side, I could hit this!` This seemed like a funny solution though, since my weak pixie set is serviceable, whereas grifter feels like one of the harder downtime components in the game. Nonetheless, I managed to hit and seal toe set flip grifter for the first time, and within 20 minutes or so, I hit and sealed pixie grifter. I`m still determined to hit the other pixie grifter just once, just to get it out of the way.

I went back in the gym and kicked with everybody some more. Everybody looked pretty tired... the floor frustrated us early I think. Because I was so tired, I decided just to mess around with dumb tricks. On the train ride over, I had told Kim and Takumi that while wonton set required lots more energy than quantum, I thought the footwork was way easier. So, in order to test my theory, I decided to try wonton sets on my flipside. Sure, I`ve never hit a quantum set using that leg, but if my theory was true, I could compensate with strength. Amazingly enough, I managed to hit flip fs toe blur, flip fs crispy dlo, and flip fs tripwalk! I`ve never hit the non-symposium versions of any of those moves! That was kind of funny.

After that I sat down and just called out combos for Takumi. Got him to hit spinning osis to gyro mirage, and he almost got it flip too. I want to see him hit mobius x2 before I leave Japan. Takumi kept coming close to diving clipper-peeking osis-barfly all day. It was weird cause the first 2 tricks in the link looked so easy... I think that could become a staple for him in the future. Everybody always compares Takumi to a young Vasek, but the more I see him play, the more I think his style will resemble Felix Zenger`s. I think that`s pretty cool.

Since it was a Sunday night, we all headed our separate ways after the session. I went to a friend`s house and took a bath for an hour, and just stretched all night, cause I was paranoid about not being able to walk the next day. I actually turned out OK. But while my legs were a complete wreck, if somebody were to ask me if I would do it again, I wouldn`t hesitate a second before answering a resounding `hell yes.`

Yay footbag! I`m back!

[max]

Yay! Ken's back!

Hey Ken could you post of vid of a slow mo'd WHAT?!? I'd really like to understand this trick better.

Glad you're kicking again and enjoying it!

[Adam]

Ken:

Sorry I am writing this at the last minute, but I will be in Tokyo this Saturday, the 5th. My parents are coming to Japan on the 6th so I decided to go a day early and get in a little session at Yoyogi on Saturday afternoon. Are you coming down at that time?

[Johnny]

Completely off topic:
Congratulations on having the highest views/posts ratio! WOO!

[C-Fan]

Hey Ken could you post of vid of a slow mo'd WHAT?!? !

There`s actually a decent chance of this happening. I played in Morioka over the weekend, and halfway through the session Shin-chan arrived with a camera. It was really big and old, so if we do upload footage, I have no idea how good or bad the footage will be, but I did get several WHAT?!?s on film. I`m still waiting to hear what`s the deal with the footage we shot. At this session I also tried to hit WHAT?! flipside, which produced an amusing result, which hopefully you can see if we get the vids uploaded.

[hacksterbator]

what!? is one of the most mind numbing tricks ever! seriously, i have seen it a couple times with my own eyes and i still don't get it. i really hope you can get that uploaded some time soon! oh, hey ken, i'm still around, i check my pms when ever i get any, and check modified once a week or so. i haven't fallen off the face of the planet, i just have better things to do... like get good befor TSG3! cheers!

[C-Fan]

Man, Friday already. Haven`t finalized any footbag plans for this weekend; not even 100% sure I should play or not. My 5 week break was nice, but I came back a little bit too hard. It wasn`t that smart coming back to footbag and doing nothing but flailing and wonton sets all day, for 2 days straight. My legs are still recovering from that really.

I was watching some NBA tapes my folks sent me, and I got to really thinking: I should take a hint from Grant Hill and Chris Webber. Those two guys used to have real explosive, slash to the bucket and slam styles, but these days they have evolved to a more smooth, passing and jump-shooting style. I really love footbag, and I think that maybe I should take a cue from Hill and Webber, and alter my style. Like, drop symposium sets and furious altogether, and learn moves which are softer-impact, like spins. I also ordered new lavers and insoles today, which hopefully will help out. I`m not quite injured, I just don`t feel quite 100%.

Thinking about Grant Hill has helped my mental game, lets see if now I can`t use him as inspiration to play in a softer style as well.

Speaking of people who have inspiring style, today I went back and re-watched some of my favorite ThomASS videos from the past. I think the person whose style I enjoyed the most today was Scott Bevier, especially his section on last year`s East Coast Champs video. I also rewatched some Chilly Philly footage from last year. The long video on the Philly footworks page also has some incredibly nice Bevier footage, as well as some good Sebastien stuff too. I think both those guys are really under-rated. But then, I doubt it matters to them.

Still no word on getting last week`s WHAT?!? videos uploaded...

[C-Fan]

I`m gonna take a cue from Jorden, and post a video in my blog and not in the video section. I`ve talked a lot about Takumi in this blog, so I`m happy to finally be able to show you some good footage of him. The video is part Takumi (young guy), part Tencho (Morishige san, one of Japan`s best, and the maker of the video), and some Hearts (Hatsu).

http://footbaka1.fc2web.com/shred/takumix_in_zero.htm

[mosher]

Wow! Takumi is so smooth!

Also, he has great ankles, I love his frigidy zooming stuff, so stylish.

Thanks for the link Ken, he really is worth all your hype!

[sampotter]

Nice! I really like his style. It combines a lot of good aspects from a lot of good players.

[C-Fan]

Awesome, awesome weekend. Straight up excellent. Last weekend I didn`t have a chance to play footbag, which meant that this weekend was my first time playing in 2 weeks, and I was really itching to play. Work has been real light lately, which means I have lots of time to watch videos on modified, pester TSG3 sponsors with mails, and in general think about footbag. So on Friday, I was bouncing off the walls waiting for the weekend to kick off. I spent a good chunk at work just stretching my legs and doing shin-strengthening exercises in anticipation of the weekend.

There were a few reasons why I was so excited to play this weekend. Of course, not being able to play the last weekend sucked, so the extra week break heightened my desire to play. But even moreso than that, on Thursday I learned that Yuko and Tencho would be at Yoyogi Park on Saturday! Yay! Yuko is probably Japan`s best shredita. She used to live less than an hour away, and we`d play together on weekends. I helped teach her her basic 2s and 3s, and helped her develop a really solid foundation. Unfortunately she moved to Kyoto for grad school, so I`ve only had the opportunity to play with her maybe 3 times a year or so. So when I heard she`d be in Tokyo this weekend, I was real stoked about that. Tencho is also one of Japan`s best players. Similar to Yuko, I used to play with him quite often, but due to a change in his work schedule, I hadn`t seen him in about a year. Damn, probably about a year. But he posts videos of himself on the net, so I was following his progress, and was therefore real stoked to get to play with him.

Saturday morning I get up early and go to the station to catch my shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. I make a point to get out of bed and eat breakfast, instead of sleeping an extra 20 minutes, because I know I`ll need the energy later on. As I get to the station, I see small flakes of snow are falling, but not sticking. This makes me even more stoked to go to Tokyo, where I know it is already spring-y weather. I sleep most of the train ride down, waking once to see heavy snow falling in my prefecture. When I wake up in Tokyo, I see blue skies and people walking around in light coats: nice enough weather to shred outside.

I catch all my trains to Yoyogi making excellent time, and stretch my legs out on the train. Once in Yoyogi, my heart beats faster. It`s beautiful out. There`s a light breeze, but when it doesn`t blow, you can feel the sun on your arms. Walking faster, I make it to the pier and am greeted by the site of... nobody kicking? Where is everybody? I look at my watch: 12:47pm. I know people have been starting around 1 or 2 lately, but I figured people would want to take advantage of the good weather. I thought wrong. I look around in the hopes of finding people tossing frisbee, but nothing is going on, so I change into my gear and warm up slowly. I get a bit restless though, so I mess around with some bigger tricks. I hit WHAT?! from toe, but I`d done that like a year ago. Still fun. I also hit BS Bed for the first time, but no seal because it took me by surprise. I`d been wanting to try that trick since I saw the Flash video. People start to show up around 1:30, but nobody starts warming up until around 2.

Finally, I get a circle going with Keita, Kim, and some others. It just feels straight up awesome to be playing in nice weather again. I don`t know if I love anything more than that. All day I focus on mixing up my style a lot, and laying off the hard stuff. I do way fewer 5s than usual, and a bunch of people comment that my style is different. Kim says I`m playing more `tricky` which makes me happy. I have the ability to mix things up, but I fall easily into patterns, which is something I want to break out of. All day I do lots of drifter-drifter type combos, lots of fairy butterflies, torques (bs), leggy legbeaters (bs) and throw in some spins too. Its a lot of fun, and I can feel it is just plain easier on my body. I do almost no symposium sets all session, unlike my last Tokyo session, when I pretty much ONLY did symposium sets. I remember to try out my Shred30 routine, and it goes pretty well. I manage to get the first 22 contacts dropless, and then close out with a few more tricks. All told my Shred30 should be around 25 uniques, only 2 of which are 5s. I still think my Shred30 needs some tweaking. When planning a shred30, its really key to pace it out, so you have pockets where you can catch your breath and get your energy back, but still be racking up uniques while doing so.

Tencho and Yuko show up, and to my pleasant surprise so does Bunko, Tencho`s girlfriend. Bunko is the 2nd best shredita in Japan. More consistent than Yuko, but more one sided, and not as big tricks. I hadn`t played with her in a few months, so that was a cool surprise. She`s picked up a really nice fairy set since last time, and was doing her usual tiltless laced with smears, pixie clippers, and now fears. Her flip clipper is coming in better too. Playing with Tencho was a treat. Just a very smooth style. His strong side spin is quite possibly the best in Japan. Saw him do spinning clip-spinning ducking clipper-spinning clipper. He also hit vortex to spinning butterfly. Some nice raking moves too. I was most impressed though by his spinning zulu. A lot of people do zulu really thin, but Tencho`s spinning zulu was super deep and super clean. Very cool.

I also enjoyed playing with Yuko. Unfortunately, she hadn`t been playing much recently, so her consistency had fallen off some. Still, ripwalks, pixie butterflies, and drifters all around. I helped her with her osis some, but its hard to say where her game is at, since she`s been out of practice lately. I`ll get a chance to play with her in 3 weeks on my birthday, so that should be fun. During the Saturday session I saw Keita hit and seal bladerunner real easily. I had seen him hit predator countless times before, but never bladerunner, so that was cool. As always, it looked effortless when he did hit it. On Saturday Takumi didn`t show, and when I asked, the explanation made me laugh: he had middle school graduation that day. Takumi is getting so good at footbag, and is so mature, that I often forget that he`s so young. Starting April, he`ll be in high school. Damn, that`s upside right there.

Towards the end of the Saturday session, I pissed off my left hip flexor while doing a blurry drifter. I was kinda mystified how this happened, considering I warmed up well, and was playing so lightly throughout. Still, when Tencho busted out his camera, I recognized my chance to film a WHAT?! so I could get a video online. I hit a nice enough one, so hopefully that will go online soon. I stretched some afterwards and cooled down by tossing frisbee. I spend about an hour that night soaking in a bath and stretching.

[C-Fan]

On Sunday I woke up feeling pretty damn sore. My hip flexor felt a bit better, but going up and down stairs hurt, so footbag was out for the day. Still, I had plans to go to Yoyogi to toss frisbee and juggle, so I dropped by and said hey for a bit. Takumi was there and he was really busting. Longer, more genuine strings. I really like his style, its very clean, very energetic. Unfortunately he couldn`t make it on Monday (national holiday), which sucks because I have yet to get really good Takumi footage on video.

I was also stoked to see Yusuke again. I`m not sure, but I think I hadn`t seen him since Worlds or JFC2, so it had been quite a while. He was playing pretty well, I had kinda forgotten his style, so it was refreshing to see it again. he assured me he`d be there the next day, and the weather was supposed to be better, so I said goodbye to everybody (and congratulated Takumi on graduating Junior High) and went to rest my leg by shooting some pool.

[Canthraxsoldier]

this was a great read....I wish I had've gotten into it earlier so I didn't have to read all 10 pages

but makes me want to go to World's sometime...... you know what I think I might jsut make myself a footblog

[C-Fan]

Thanks for the nice words Danny Boy. I`m honored you were inspired to start your own blog.

Anyway, as I hinted at in my last post, my Tokyo trip was a 3 day deal, so there`s still more words to fill the screen.

Monday morning I wake up feeling better; my hip flexor doesn`t hurt when I walk, but I still have some annoying blisters on my left foot. I eat some leftover Indian food for breakfast, then head out. The second I step outside, I know I`m going to play. It`s just straight up beautiful weather out, the first day of real Spring weather. I warm up in Yoyogi by tossing frisbee for an hour, then head to the pier to shred in a t-shirt.

Even though people played on Saturday and Sunday, there`s still a good turnout. I`m sure the weather didn`t hurt. I`m most excited to see Yusuke. While it was cool seeing him the day before and catching up, its another thing to get to play with him. Mostly it was just great to see him playing again, since he had to take some time off due to health reasons right after worlds. As usual, I was most impressed with his spins. His spins are super fast, and he spots them real quick. He can do around 10 spinning clippers real easy, and was doing things like multiple spinning clippers to merkon. The biggest change in his game is the addition of a really clean paradox whirl. He had some cool runs where he threw in a ton of moves involving different components: smear, legbeater, spinning clipper, paradox whirl, ducking clipper, ripwalk etc all in the same run. Good string length too. I`d like to see him work his flipside some more though, since everything except for ducks and dives are only on one side.

Paul played well, hitting some nice assassins and toe-shuffle, and it looks like he`s started using his clippers some more. Hearts was also playing well. His stepping sets are higher these days and very clean, and his spins are also more consistent, and really good. I also thought X+Y was playing real on point. I can`t tell which pixie set is flip, and he looks more comfortable with his atomic sets these days. His downtime mlos are also getting real good, I saw him hit clipper mlo double bsos. He also hit the best trick I saw on Monday: Haze. Bam, so pretty.

I did a good job of playing real lightly all day. I started a run with a vortex, which I was stoked about because I hadn`t hit that in ages. Mostly I stuck to long runs of mixup, staying away from big moves, though I did manage to hit symp bubba egg for the first time, and was able to seal bs bed with a run. I was having some trouble with my flip pixie set, when Hearts pointed out that I wasn`t keeping my knee straight. That made me really happy. He was right of course, and from that point on I had some real good sets (damn you flip pigbeater!), but what made me happiest was the fact that :
a. Hearts could tell what I was doing wrong, and gave me good advice.
and
b. He wasn`t afraid to tell me.

That`s really a good sign for the Japanese scene. I`ve always been a little worried that the Japanese tendency to be overly polite would make them hesitant to call each other on `the` or give each other constructive criticism, but that`s thankfully not the case. Awesomeness.

I`ve also found that some players are developing a really good eye for "the." So when I was giving a few attempts at hitting gyro whirl, I got X+Y to look at them for his opinion. I hit a few, and one of them felt real good. X+Y said it looked good to him, so I feel like now I`ve hit that trick. Knowing you`ve hit a trick once is a nice confidence booster to hit it again. "I know I can hit this trick, because I`ve already hit it."

I warmed down by schooling my Shred30 some, and I feel like I could break 200 again at TSG if I really try hard. After the session I go grab some dinner with X+Y and Kim, and we discuss TSG3 logistics over cheap Mexican food. Felt pretty productive. We decided that only 3 add tricks and higher would be counted as uniques, but 2s and 1s would be counted in total adds. We had toyed with the idea of having 2s be counted as uniques, but decided that could have really bad results. We mostly talked about scheduling and judging matters, and it looks like right now things will run real smoothly.

[BainbridgeShred]

I've only just watched Takumi's first segment and his style is really nice. He has a soothing aspect to his game.

He seemed to be very one sided however.

[C-Fan]

I've only just watched Takumi's first segment and his style is really nice. He has a soothing aspect to his game.

He seemed to be very one sided however.

We don`t film nearly as much as we should here in Japan. I`m happy we finally got to show some Takumi footage, but yeah, it`s definitely not 100% representative. The video may have made him seem more one sided than he is.

Takumi definitely has a dominant toe, and one of his spins is easily stronger than the other. That said, he can pixie on both sides, step on both sides, duck on both sides, pdx whirls both sides, spin on both sides, and all of his bops are about equally strong. The last time I played with him in Tokyo I asked him to hit spinning osis to gyro mirage, and he hit it one side easily, and footed it on the other side within 2 attempts. On the whole I would say Takumi`s game is pretty balanced... the only tricks I see him only do on one side are fairy sets and his swirls. His steps, ducks, and spins in particular are all very strong on both sides.