It's so close we can taste it

Sasuke 31 starts taping in FIVE DAYS. That's in no time at all!

As if things weren't real enough, THEY ARE CONSTRUCTING THE STAGES NOW. Yesterday there was even a Nico Nico broadcast where they showed the assembly of Final Stage, but of course I totally missed out on that by sleeping through it. I thought the point of liking a Japanese show was that things would not air in the middle of the night??? Okay so it wasn't actually middle of the night, but who is awake at 6 am on a Saturday? Not me, that's for sure.

Oh, well, luckily there's a good recap of it over at Rambling Rican's, so I know what I missed, which wasn't much. Not many surprises there: I didn't expect Akiyama or Bunpei to show up, nor any of the other older competitors. I won't miss the Hedgehog or Long Jump too much either, and I'm glad that there's at least one Warped Wall! Now, if they could just bring back Half-Pipe Attack, aka the best First Stage obstacle ever, that would be awesome.

Anyway, we are not the only ones who are excited! I took to Twitter to see how our favourite competitors are preparing for the competion next week:

Source: https://twitter.com/urushiharayuuji/status/599150097469820929

Urushihara and a mysterious masked man took to the pool for some Backstream-training. Hmm, I wonder who THAT could be ...

Source: https://twitter.com/urushiharayuuji/status/599212985693773824

Nice, hooray! Yeah, I don't think anyone was surprised by that reveal. We all know this obstacle is their nemesis ...

Sorry, but this was the greatest moment in television history and no one can tell me differently.

Source: https://twitter.com/sasuke_tbs/status/599383415670976512

The start of the final stage construction! It's weird, because I know I read somewhere that Final Stage construction doesn't start until they're sure people will actually compete in it, but I always thought that sounded like total bullshit and now I know it's not true. It is finished in just a day though!

Source: https://twitter.com/inuimasato/status/599466549510975488

Words cannot describe how excited I am for the steel muscle festival!

Source: https://twitter.com/37Mistr/status/599801980173684736

Oh, and more great news: MR SASUKE IS NOW ON TWITTER. I haven't told Chriss this yet, because I wanted to dramatically reveal it on the blog. He's not competing, but the black tigers are and seems to be ready! I hope they do well, they have been a bit disappointing in the last Sasukes. I'm also kinda glad Mr Sasuke is not competing, because that means he won't be cut like last year.

Source: https://twitter.com/hiokimasashi/status/599595067536379904

Of course Urushihara is eating Shingo's wife's homemade cake, that guy tweets about food 90% of the time. I didn't screen print it but I'm pretty sure I also saw Kanno saying something about drinking beer for protein. The Sasuke diets are very interesting. Shingo himself seems to mostly be talking about the gym he's about to open and not preparing too much, but then again we all know that no amount of training is going to save him from Shingo'ing it up at some point...

Source: https://twitter.com/hitoshi_kanno/status/599729345742024704

I don't know what this means, but whatever. This is the amount of selfies we're already getting, and even though we won't know the results of Sasuke 31 for months I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE AMOUNT OF SELIFES THAT WILL BE TAKEN. I will be fucking pissed if no one brings their selfie stick to the competition to give us at least SOMETHING.

Source: https://twitter.com/sasuke_tbs/status/599816233177853952

Someone went to pray for a good Sasuke and safe competitors. Good idea, we do want to see spectacular fails and clears, but we don't want people to actually hurt themselves while they're at it. Except for Torisawa Katsuhide, of course, but hurting himself is kinda his thing.

Source: https://twitter.com/fujinosasuke/status/599854542235111424

The final adjustments! I'm not sure what the bathing is about, but Green Mountain of course means Midoiryama so I think we all know what they're preparing for. I think this is Kanno Hitoshi, Kishimoto Shinya (third stage in Sasuke 30), Kawaguchi Tomohiro (final stage in Sasuke 30) and Nagasaki Shunsuke (also third stage in Sasuke 30). Though why an earlier tweet from Nagasaki Shunsuke was in Chinese I don't know ...

Well, that's it for now, but I'm sure we'll all just be more and more psyched for the next few days. I'm extremely jealous of anyone who gets to go see it being taped, but you know ... next year I'll win Ninja Warrior SE and then I'll be there, so it's okay. For now let's just wish Rambling Rican a nice trip, and hope that Alexander Mars does GREAT in the competition as well. We're rooting for you, Alexander!! We're all rooting for you!

But until we know more ... Sayonara ninja lovers!