Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl

Raising the Curtain! World Cup (1x46)

Air date: Oct 29, 1990

Tamao tailors Kojiro's old judo uniform for Yawara to use in Seoul, as Yawara tries to learn some Korean. Jigoro supposedly is doing pre-tournament meditation, but it turns out he was just thinking about which restaurants to hit in Seoul. Itou Fujiko has spent several weeks organizing other women at the college to sew a giant Yawara cheer banner, with which she wants to surprise Yawara; she stays up all night putting the finishing touches (though still unable to fix all mistakes) but arrives too late to see Yawara off. However, she is able to unfurl the 20 m (66-ft) banner on the tarmac so that Yawara and others could see it from the plane as it takes off. Sayaka meets her mortal enemy (and opponent in her weight class), Kim Yonsky, and they exchange insults based on what kind of food they are make each other out of at the match. Yawara is separated from the other judokas and goes on her own to search for her father, where she encounters Belkins, the Belgian champion, who is modeling traditional Korean dresses. She also ends up in a dojo, where Teleshikova is hard at work training; when Yawara tries to show her Kojiro's picture, she slaps it away, but they do not fight. Yamashita, the former Olympic gold medalist, tells Yawara that he met Kojiro recently but gives no further details other than that Kojiro must be watching the event in Seoul as well. The Japanese team enters the arena, with Sayaka carrying the flag (Matsuda comments that the honor must have been bought by the Honami money).