YoYo Related News From Around The World
By Steve Brown
sOMEThING and YoYoFactory have a video contest going on with Japanese store Rewind, and this latest entry is absolutely glorious. Featuring Rei Iwakura and Ishihara Hiroyasu and all of the skill and ridiculous tricks you could ever hope for.
Yoyos used are the Something JetSet, YoYoFactory Replay, and YoYoFactory Loop 900.
By Steve Brown
With Duncan’s International YoYo Championship coming this weekend and the World YoYo Contest next week, all eyes are on 2013 World YoYo Champion Janos Karancz. Janos is still a favorite to pull out his own brand of insane technical play and possibly take the top spot at Worlds, IYYC, or both. Check out this new promo video for him, from our friends at Rewind.
Yoyo used is the Barracuda by Duncan Toys.
Nagoya, well known among Japanese yo-yo players as the home of the very strong Central Japan Regional Yo-yo Contest, hosted a special edition of 44FESTA on May 31st.
A yo-yo event in the region will certainly attract tons of great players, and 44FESTA was no exception. In addition to the mini contest, sponsor tables, and lucky draws, the freestyle contest had big name contestants and judges: among the competitors, Tatsuya Fujisaka, Shinya Kido, Jun Aramaki, Hironori Mii, and Kazuki Okada. Among the judges, Hiroyuki Suzuki, Kengo Kido, Rei Iwakura, Hiroyasu Ishihara, Ryosuke Kawamura, and Shu Takada’s father, Mr. Makoto Takada!
As you can guess, Nagoya is also where Rewind’s headquarters is located, and the entire crew took part in the contest.
And much to boss Suzuki’s delight, sOMEThING team member Yamato Murata won the freestyle contest!
Top five (with a tie at 4th) in the freestyle contest were:
Freestyle videos can be seen here.
The next 44FESTA will be vol.8 on July 12th! Don’t miss it!
By Steve Brown
Thanks to our friends at Rewind for giving us some explanation on this one! The yoyoing starts around 0:56.
On the September 16, 2013, broadcast of channel Fuji TV’s popular program SMAPxSMAP, actor Hugh Jackman appeared on the program to promote his new movie “The Wolverine” (titled “Wolverine: Samurai” here in Japan).
In the popular Bistro SMAP segment, he admitted that he happened to have been a yoyo champion when he was 10 years old. Jackman got out a yoyo (allegedly a Hyper YoYo MonsterShell) and proceeded to impress the members of SMAP with his proficiency at tricks such as Walk the Dog, Rock the Baby, and Loop the Loop.
Particularly impressive was the number of solid inside loops Jackman was able to perform on such a basic fixed axle yo-yo! We can only hope to see some more of his yo-yo skills on the other stops of his PR tour.
By Steve Brown
Our friends at Rewind YoYo Store in Japan released another player promo video, this time for 5x Philippine National 5A Champion and 2x Asia-Pacific 5A Champion, Bryan Jardin!
Bryan is one of our favorite counterweight players, and this video shows off his skill and some of his trademark moves.
By Steve Brown
The Yamato YoYo Circle posted their entry for the C3YoYoDesign x REWIND video contest and it’s seriously the best thing you’ll see all day! Enjoy and share!
By Steve Brown
Rewind dropped a new player promo video, this one featuring C3YoYoDesign’s newest team member in Poland, Grzegorz “Plamek” Wojcik. This guy is a machine…all speed and precision and always worth watching. Enjoy!
By Steve Brown
Slack master Magne Sætran turned in a pretty amazing entry for the C3YoYoDesign x REWIND video contest, definitely worth watching!
By Steve Brown
World YoYo Champion Hank Freeman gives us another round of densely-packed 3A tricks, courtesy of Japanese retailer, Rewind. Watching this it’s hard to believe that 3A started off as a bet between Mark McBride and I, then became a running joke, and now it has its own division at contests worldwide.
History is weird.