I will tell you all a tale of a young man on a search for his Holy Grail. It all started back in 2004 with a young man named (let’s for the sake of this story call him ‘genji’) at a local toy store where they happened to be selling the Spintastics Tiger Shark and Maelstrom, genji bought both of these, but didn’t find the tiger shark to be keeping up with his skill level’s and his Maelstrom broke. He even purchased a second Maelstrom and that broke as well! Dawning the age of high speed internet, he happened to visit a online yoyo retailer where he happened to purchase a Throw Monkey which came with a hidden treasure. This hidden treasure happened to be a miniature CD that contained a video with people doing tricks he had never seen before yoyo’ing to one of his favorite songs by one of his favorite bands; Tsunami Bomb, ‘Take the Reigns’. From that miniature CD came a special fondness for 2 particular players, Steve Brown and Kota Watanabe. Genji must have watched the video on that Miniature CD over 100 times, still in awe of Kota’s amazing skill everytime he watched it.
Genji then spent much of his time on KWOS and Sector Y learning lots of new tricks from Diagrams, some of which took weeks to learn, as there were not many videos to learn from, only pictured/descriptive diagrams. After over a year and a half without meeting any fellow throwers and trying to learn from descriptive text and diagrams, genji got distracted by work and school and gave up throwing for over 6 years. Flash ahead to December 2011, genji goes to his moving storage to take everything out because he is getting fed up with the ridiculous prices, he searches through boxes to see what can be scrapped and what he is going to keep when he opens up a box with his old Throw Monkey and a Hitman, Speeder and 2 unopened Anti-Yo Eetsits (the last purchase made before the long break). He takes the throw monkey out of the box and starts giving it a throw and realizes that he can still do cold fusion and a few other tricks.
When genji gets home he goes through the box more deeply and finds his old miniature CD from Duncan that came with his original throw monkey and he puts it into his computer. The spark and excitement he felt the first time watching it rushes back through his body and his love for throwing comes back with an eagerness stronger than before. He searches online for some modern tutorials to find out that he has missed a lot of excitement over the past 6 years. Genji also searches for a yoyo chat which just happens to be the yoyoexpert site, where his path crosses with several nice people to answer all of his questions about what he has missed the past 6 years. After a week or so, genji even conducts his first trade to get some more modern throws in which he trades 1 of his 2 MIB Eetsit’s for about 5 or 6 modern yoyo’s. Jump ahead another 7 months and genji is to be the proud father of a new baby boy! Another 5-6 months is taken off of yoyo’ing because well…he has to be a father and take care of his son and work more then ever before to keep up with the new needs of his son, he still yoyo’s a little, but very little time is put into learning anything new, only keeping up with what he already knew.
As things get more on a regular scheduled routine, the yoyo’ing continues back up in his life and he is back on his journey. One late night genji is browsing youtube when he finds a video of Kota Watanabe that he had seen before, but did not pay as close attention to the details of his FHZ used. He notices at the end that there is some type of picture or symbol on the FHZ and after searching google does not find the body color as a normally sold color either…he is intrigued and wants to try and find out what exactly it is. He finds out through asking around in the YYE chats that it is a Samurai edition FHZ, but upon later discovery, they only made the Samurai FHZ with a white body. He later learns that Kota is using the Samurai caps on a Spingears/YYN dayglow or edge glow body (this has yet to be 100% confirmed)
After months of searching online for the Samurai FHZ, during one of his many late night chats leads him in the discussion of FHZ’s and in particular the Samurai FHZ with a fellow thrower and who genji considers to be a good friend, even though they have never met in real life. Another month or so goes by and both of them had found many special edition FHZ’s, but none of them had come across the Samuria (genji’s Holy Grail) but to this person, their Holy Grail was a MIP takeshi unmodified FHZ. We had made an agreeement that if either one of us found the other person’s ‘Holy Grail’ then we would either purchase it immediately if probable or notify them immediately so that they could purchase it. One late night genji gets a PM from his unnamed friend who sent several PM’s with excitement saying ‘Get online Now!!! I found it!!!’ Just from reading that, I knew exactly what it was he had found…it was my Holy Grail…he told me that he found a person in Taiwan who was rare FHZ’s and the Samurai just happened to be one of them, he also told me it would be $90 dollars. This may seem like a lot to most people for just a FHZ, but to me, $90 was well worth it to bring my search to an end and finally to make my dream a reality.
Keep in mind that genji brought up the topic of the Samurai FHZ in chat at least a few times per day and he is pretty sure that most people were tired of hearing about it and wish that he comes it across it soon, so he could shut the heck up about it already! A week or so goes by and genji asks his unnamed friend if it had arrived and he stated that it had arrived yesterday, but you weren’t online. Genji found this to be a bit odd that he did not send a PM like he did upon first discovering it. The agreement before hand was that he would purchase the Samurai FHZ for genji and genji would pay him the $90 dollars through paypal as soon as it arrived at his house. Genji asks his unnamed friend for his paypal address so he can send him the money and his friend (who has sent other FHZ’s in the past) genji’s unnamed friend stated that almost all of his FHZ’s packaging he had purchased to keep MIP arrived damaged, except for ONE and this ONE just happened to be the Samurai FHZ he had purchased for genji.
Genji asked his unnamed friend when he was going to send the Samurai FHZ, but his friend was still hesitant…genji knew something was not right. This unamed friend was like ‘I have never seen anything like this before…all red counterweights, 2 dice and a ball, no panda or character counterweight!’ genji thought that that was cool, but did not really care about the counter weights as much as his friend did, only to get his hands on the Samurai FHZ he had been searching for all this time. Then genji’s friend stated that he could not let the Samurai be opened and refused to sell it, but stated he would try and find another Samurai FHZ for genji. Genji thought he was just messing around, but he went into the YYE chat later to speak with this person and brought up the same topic in public chat and he said something along the lines of ‘dude I know I’m being a total richard and I bought this for you, but I gotta keep it man! It has 3 red counterweights and 2 dice! I’ve never seen anything like this before. The picture that the guy in Taiwan sent me (and he pasted the link of the picture) had 3 different colored counter weights. If this Samurai FHZ had different colored counter weights I would sell it to you in a heart beat, but I gotta keep this one man, sorry but I’ll try and find you another one and give it to you at a major loss.’
And so…genji’s search for his beloved Samurai FHZ is still continuing, even though he could almost feel it in his hands, only to be snatched away…
If you or a loved one you know have a Samurai FHZ or even just the Samurai Caps, please contact genji on the forums at YYE immediately! Thank You
Video Below of Exact FHZ that genji is searching for;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5hMKtRxqkk
UPDATE 3/15/2013
My search for my Samurai FHZ is finally over thanks to Brandon Jackson from Duncan. Thanks again Brandon for everything, I really appreciate your generosity and I will continue to support Duncan for life! Thanks again! THROW DUNCAN!
http://www.jacksongraphicworks.com/random/Samurai.jpg
UPDATED 3/23/2013
This is what I got in the mail from Brandon Jackson from Duncan!!! Thanks again Brandon!!!
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8510/8576814040_7367327086.jpg
Brandon Jackson is Awesome! Throw Duncan!!! by g3nji, on Flickr
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8524/8575717827_96eb96c109.jpg
Samurai!!! by g3nji, on Flickr
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8387/8576815936_44e7506905.jpg
Kohta Style!!! by g3nji, on Flickr
Stay tuned for when I assemble the ULTIMATE FHZ!!! pics coming soon!
(I don’t have a facebook…and prefer not to sign up for one)