#forever3bk

Thank you for granting us this precious opportunity today. Is this the first sit-down with all 3 of you since the 2009 program (Figure Skating Opening of the Season Special by TV Asahi)?

Dai: Oh, is it?

Nobu: Yeah, we haven’t had one since then, right?

Dai: I guess not.

Taka: Right. Do you remember on that program there was a question about what Doraemon items you wanted? And when I answered, “The Dictator Switch” [“Dokusai Switch” a switch to erase the existence of bothersome people], you both went, “Wow, how scary!” lol.

Dai: I don’t remember.

Nobu: I don’t remember.

Takahiko: I remember very well.

Dai/Nobu: Ahahaha LOL

Anyway, I would like to start by asking you about when you first met. Between the 3 of you, were Takahashi-san and Oda-san the first to meet?

Dai: Wasn’t the first time we met at that competition in Kyoto?

Nobu: Yeah, the Western Japan Elementary and Middle School Championships.

Dai: Yeah! That was the first time I saw Nobu.

Nobu: Yeah, that’s right. My impression back then was, ‘Wow, there are some talented guys coming from Okayama.”

Dai: And then I started to commute to the Takatsuki rink, and we started talking in the 1st  or 2nd year of Middle School.

Nobu: Yeah, it was around that time we started getting closer [talking more intimately].

What did you call each other back then?

Nobu: Everyone was already calling him Dai-chan back then.

Dai: What did I call Nobu back then?

Nobu: Didn’t you call me “Nobunari-kun”? Yeah, it was “Nobunari-kun” lol. Back then, Dai-chan already had the status of a junior champion. When his music came on during practice, everyone would scramble to get closer to the walls, like “I’ll get in trouble if I get in his way.” So I already had the image of him, like, “Wow, what an amazing person.” But even so, I still called him Dai-chan lol.

Dai: Everyone called me Dai-chan.

Nobu: Yeah. And then I think I first saw Takahiko at the Novice Japanese National Championships (1998). He’s two years younger than me, so he was in the Novice B championships. That was the first time I caught a glimpse of him.

Taka: Yeah.

Nobu: I had been hearing people talk like, “Kozuka-san’s son is so talented,” so I thought, “Ah, so this is Kozuka-san’s kid.”

Taka: When I first met Naru-kun it was at the Osaka Junior Nats (1999). You were there, right?

Nobu: Yeah, I was! I was eliminated from the preliminary rounds after the short program. My first Junior competition, I ended up 27th lol.

Dai: Ahahaha lol

Nobu: That was when I performed at a Junior event by invitation for the first time coming from Novice, and I was so excited to compete in Osaka, I ended up putting too much energy into everything and screwed up all the jumps lol.  

Taka (looking straight at Nobu): You kinda always did that, you put too much energy into it lol.

Nobu: Yeah, yeah! That’s why I’m skating better now lol. Way back then it was like I’d get too tense.

At that time, were you at a point where you’d share lodgings and meet at competitions and stuff?

Nobu: I went to a competition in Belgium with Takahiko. That was my first international event.

Taka: Oh, that’s right.

Nobu: Takahiko had already gone to many international events and knew how to get by overseas, so he taught me all sorts of things. I was just about to start high school and I was studying for the entrance exam. While we were abroad, he’d always sit next to me and tutor me.

Dai: LOL

Nobu: I’d be like, “I really don’t get math!!” lol.

Dai: Really?

Nobu: He was always in my room, solving my math problems for me. He’d teach me math the entire time.

Dai: LOOL

Taka: I’d get lonely on my own, so we’d just stay together the whole time lol

Nobu: Takahiko’s mother (Coach Kozuka Sachiko) and my mother (Coach Oda Noriko) were really close, so we’d often have meals together, too.

Taka: We had waffles too, right?

Nobu: We did, we did!

Taka: They wouldn’t let us give any to the girls. We were told that it was only for the guys.  

Nobu: Yeah, that’s right! We were with Aki Sawada and Nana Takeda and the others.

Dai: Ah, that’s nostalgic.

Nobu: Yeah.

Taka: And everyone’s gotten married already. It’s been a long time. And then, the first time I met Dai-chan at a competition, it was in Croatia, right?

Dai: Right. With Hirokazu Kobayashi and others.

Taka: Hirokazu was a senpai from my rink, so I became friends with Dai-chan through him.

Dai: Right, starting from there.

And when did you first start to become aware of each other as rivals?

Nobu: It was the season after I won the Junior World Championships (2005). Even if I wasn’t really aware [of a rivalry], people around me started comparing me to Dai-chan.

Dai: There was also the fact that it was the Torino Olympic (2006) season.

Nobu: And that spring I got into the same university (Kansai University), so that drew even more attention.

Dai: Right, yeah.

Nobu: And, when I was asked, “Who is your rival?” I’d answer, “It’s Dai-chan.” Because I knew that was the answer they were looking for lol.

Dai: And that was when we started appearing in competitions together more often.

Nobu: Right, yeah.

Dai: There wasn’t a lot of overlap during Juniors right? Because I went to Seniors early.

Nobu: We didn’t overlap at all.

Taka: At what age did you rise to Seniors, Dai-chan?

Dai: I think I was 16?

Nobu: At the Kyoto NHK Cup (2002) when Dai was competing, I was really excited to go and root for him. I was yelling, “Go, Dai-chan!” with everyone else from the rink.

Dai: Hahahaha.

Nobu: Now that I think about it, I didn’t run into Takahiko much at Junior competitions, right?

Taka: There was some overlap, but I messed up a bunch of things, so it was very scattered. I played soccer too much, I did too much warming-up…

Nobu: And you forgot your costume…

Taka: That was at Nats, actually!

Nobu: At Nats, huh!

Taka: Yeah, the Nagoya one (in 2006). That was so bad, man.

Dai: Ahahaha LOL.

As Takahashi-san and Oda-san were being called “rivals,” Kozuka-san joined in, and the three you of you went on to fight fiercely against one another for a long period of time. Looking back, what are your thoughts now?

Nobu: We were always told that we were “in a fierce battle against each other” but that’s not how it felt to us, right?

Dai: Right, yeah.

Taka: Yeah.

Nobu: Dai-chan was always great at the interpretation and steps, Takahiko had amazing skating skills, so what I felt the most was that I wanted to absorb their skills.

Dai: We were at the same rink so we had a lot of opportunities to watch each other train. When you notice the other person is working hard, it makes you work hard, too. So it was good to receive that kind of stimulation. The thing is, when it’s time to compete, you can only think about your own performance.

Nobu: Right.

Taka: Yeah, that’s right. When we were together in competitions, we weren’t that aware of each other, it was more when we were in different competitions and I heard someone got good results that I’d think, “I better do my best, too!” That was often good motivation for me.

Nobu: When I found out that people from other sports, both men and women, don’t speak to their rivals that much, I was surprised. After I retired, I realized that in figure skating the atmosphere doesn’t get tense like that.

Dai: That’s true.

Nobu: People are so surprised, like, “Wow, you get along really well.” And for us that was just normal.

Taka: Yeah, that’s normal.

Nobu: That’s why when people asked me about rivals, I think my true feeling was that it didn’t quite make sense.

Was that because you’ve been seeing each other often since you were little?

Dai: And I think it’s also because our sport isn’t 1 vs 1 [there is no direct confrontation].

Taka: Because it’s an individual competition, yeah.

Dai: You get your results from what you do on your own.

Taka: Since it’s a competition where judges decide the scores, it makes it easier.

Dai: Right, since other people are giving you the scores.

Nobu: Yeah, that’s right.

Dai: And it’s whether you yourself were able to get good results or not.

Taka: Sometimes you get results, sometimes you don’t. When you do, you’re happy, when you don’t, you’re sad…

Nobu: It’s all your responsibility. It felt more like fighting against yourself. 

Out of the many competitions in which you were all together, which one left the biggest impression?

Dai: For me it was probably the NHK Cup in Nagano, when the three of us got 1st  (Takahashi-san), 2nd (Oda-san) and 3rd  (Kozuka-san) places.

Taka: In 2006, right?

Nobu: Right, all 3 of us skated the FS clean! I went after Takahiko, and I saw that he did so well and I thought, “Aaaah, I better work hard!”

Taka: That was when I came in 4th in the SP. Chengjiang Li was 3rd.

Dai: Chengjiang Li! Ah, that takes me back!

Nobu: I wonder how he’s doing these days.

Taka: Back then, during the press conference, somebody asked, “Are the rumors that you’re practicing a Quad-Quad true?” And he said, “Yes, I am.”

Dai: Seriously?!

Taka: Really!

Nobu: That time in Nagano, Takahiko and I went to the bathhouse every night, didn’t we?

Taka: Oh yeah! We did lol. We asked Dai-chan, “Won’t you come?” and he said, “My body feels sluggish, I’m not going.” Lol

Nobu: Oh yeah, yeah, we got rejected, didn’t we! We got rejected and went by ourselves lol.

Dai: LOL. Oh, but there was also Vancouver (Olympics 2010), of course.  

Taka: Vancouver was so much fun.

Nobu: I have some hilarious memories from after the competition was over lol

Dai & Taka: LOL

Nobu: We kept using skype nonstop lol.

Dai: Even though we were right next to each other lol.

Taka: I was using Skype, and Dai-chan was like "What's that?" So I set it up, and it was like, "let's try it out, let's all try it." "There is also a chat function." "Let's try that, let's!"

Nobu: Even though the distance was like this [measures with his hands].

Dai: LOOL We were right next to each other!

Taka: Yeah.

Nobu: And we kept using the chat but somehow we were silent. No one would say anything.

Taka: We would just talk through the text chat instead.

Dai: Yeah, we were just quiet the whole time!

Nobu: That will always be funny lol

Taka: It was so funny, right? lol

Nobu: And then we went to the Olympic village to stuff ourselves with McDonald’s lol.

Dai: It was like, "Do we go?!"

Nobu: What time was that? It was quite late wasn't it. I feel like it was the middle of the night.

Dai: It was.

Taka: It was like 3 or 4AM.

Nobu: Yeah, yeah!

Taka: The McDonald’s was open 24/7, so we went to grab a bite.

Nobu: It was so much fun.

Dai: So much fun.

Taka: And then when we were going to support the girls at the ladies' event, we put on face-paint lol.

Nobu: We did, we did lol.

Taka: Dai was going to write Japan on his cheek, but he wrote it backwards lol.

Dai: LOOL Because I was writing it while looking in the mirror so I got it wrong!

Nobu: And we were like, "No, Dai-chan, no! It's wrong!" lol

Taka:  Yeah, like, “That clearly just says ‘today’!” lol

Dai: “Today” LOL

(T/N: 日本 (Japan) backwards becomes 本日 which means “today”)

Was there a service in the Olympic village where you could get your face painted?

Nobu: Well, we decided we all wanted to paint our faces, so we bought art supplies and did it ourselves in the men's bathroom of the Pacific Colosseum (Sports Arena).

Dai: Wasn't it Takahiko who went to buy the art supplies?

Taka: Yeah!

Dai: That was a lot of fun. And at the closing ceremony there was a ball flying around for some reason lol.

Nobu, Taka: Ahahahaha yeah!!

Nobu: Before I knew it, we were chasing after it LOL. It was so cold that day, right?

Taka: Yeah, at the closing ceremony it was freezing cold.

You three chasing the ball in the closing ceremony became a hot topic among fans.

Dai: Really?

Nobu: I didn't think they would film that!

Dai: We didn't know, yeah.

Nobu: Chasing after a giant ball...

Taka: Like it was Sports Day or something.

Dai: We were running after it with all our might lol

Taka: We were so hyped up.

Nobu: Now that I think about it, we were so innocent when we did that, right? Even though we were all over 20.

Dai: Ahahaha I was well over twenty lol.

You were able to make such good memories because the three of you were able to go together, isn't that so?

Dai: Yeah, that's right.

Nobu: I don’t think we could even imagine not going together, all three of us.

Dai: Yeah, and not doing all this weird stuff lol.

Taka: Yeah, we wanted to go together.

The season before that (2008-09) was when Takahashi-san sustained an injury. What kind of effect did that end up having on Oda-san and Kozuka-san?

Nobu: That year there was the Worlds in Los Angeles (2009, when the number of spots for the Vancouver Olympics would be decided). Back then, I went thinking that we had to get the 3 spots also for Dai-chan’s sake. But then I just crashed and burned; I jumped too many times, and it was like, “Oh, crap, this is bad!”

Dai & Taka: LOL

Nobu: And then Takahiko really put in the work for us. Somehow we were able to save the 3 spots by the skin of our teeth, because our combined placements were exactly 13.

Taka: We were 7th (Oda) and 6th (Kozuka). That was really nerve-wrecking.

Nobu: If either of us dropped a spot, it’d be hopeless.

Taka: I was in the last group at the time, and Naru-kun was the last of the 3rd group.

Nobu: Yeah, yeah! And I thought I’d skated clean!

Taka: You even did a fist bump and everything.

Nobu: I jumped too much...

Taka: I can never forget the look on the coach’s face when you came back.

Dai: LOL

Nobu: And then I just watched the last group kind of like in prayer. It was such a feeling of relief when we just barely secured the 3 spots.

Taka: The Worlds from the year before (2008) was in Sweden and that was my first appearance at Worlds. And the year before (2007), it was just Dai-chan and Naru-kun, right?

Dai: Yeah, it was in Tokyo.

Nobu: Ah, I remember!

Taka: I was in the audience rooting really hard for you guys. And then Naru-kun found me and was like, “We got the 3 spots for you, kiddo, so do your best!”

Nobu: I wasn’t really in a position to say something so arrogant lol.

Taka: But I was thankful you worked so hard.

Dai: He worked hard.