Japanese fans travel far for figure skating heroes

Many Japanese fans prefer to focus on individual stars rather than follow team sports, says Goto,

...which is interesting and slightly paradoxical for a country known for its wa, group oriented culture etc. Didn't catch much of the comp tbh but from the little I saw Hanyu's J fans went absolutely mental after his performance, some were crying uncontrollably, screaming, throwing teddy bears, flowers etc! Can't recall such an adoring (mostly female) audience for a sports star tbh. Wouldn't want to be at the airport when he comes back to J.

A lady I know here is a crazy fan of Canada's Patrick Chan. She travels to where he is a performing and last year even studied at some English school in Canada just because it was near some rink he practiced at. Every time she is able to get rinkside seats where each time she showers him with gifts. Last trip, she gave him the latest PlayStation.

figure skating fans here are about 80-90 percent middle aged women, as the story suggests. but team sports are obviously very popular in Japan, baseball and soccer being the big two. so the spirit of wa is alive and well

They had to have been happy with the Hanyu result the other day.

Hanyu's performance Saturday broke a world record. It was also the first time all season he skated that performance with no major errors. (His last error-free free skate was December 2015, so it's been a while.)

Throwing flowers and stuffed animals after a performance is normal for figure skating. All the major events have a flock of junior skaters who zip around and pick everything up, and it's pretty common to have vendors at the arena selling gifts to throw. Some of the other skaters at the event got custom-made body pillows with pictures of the skater on them, so only flowers and Pooh bears is pretty tame.