Hello hello!
It is time for another list of judge anniversaries, or Milestone Judgeversaries, as my good colleague Carlos likes to call them! The following judges have been with the program for 10 or 5 years:
10 years:
Wataru Hosaka, Kamitakai-gun, Nagano-ken, Japan
Tomoya Nakajima, Katsushika-ku, Tokyo-to, Japan
Jasper Overman, Enschede, Netherlands
Yuusuke Sonomura, Numazu-shi, Shizuoka-ken, Japan
Hidehito Takeuchi, Shizuoka-shi, Shizuoka-ken, Japan
Jeffrey Kinner, Savannah, Georgia, United States
Tomas Trapl, Praha, Czech Republic
Matej Zatlkaj, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
5 years:
Todd Ozawa, Hilo, Hawaii, United States
Joel Bantiles, Rizal, Philippines
Dan Stephens, Bluffton, Indiana, United States
Jacob Moriarty, St Clair, New South Wales, Australia
Vincenzo Capodivento, Milano, Italy
Adrien Gerardin, Vitry-en-Perthois, Nord, France
Congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your hard work!
Our featured judge this month is Tomoya Nakajima of Japan. Regional Coordinator Kenji Suzuki writes:
Tomoya Nakajima became judge at PT Tokyo in 2001. He was already known as a rules expert in his local region even before becoming a judge. He has his own local tournament series named PWC (Planes Walker’s Cup) that started in 1999! Now Planeswalkers play one of the biggest roles in Magic, so we have to admit that his choice of name was really amazing. So far there have been 320 PWC tournaments. In the very first PWC, he issued 80 (!) new DCI membership cards. He said one other possible choice for the name of his tournament was “Manaburn”. Obviously he is happy now because he didn’t choose this word.
Other than Magic, he is studying English more and more, and he wants to study Kanji (Chinese Characters) and Shodo (calligraphy).
In his own words:
“Magic rules and the philosophy of tournament changed to really better direction year by year. Both maintain my motivation for judging, so I want to say thank you to judges and staffs all over the world. I think rules need to be changed for philosophy, but philosophy should not be changed for rules. For me, tournament philosophy, that is to say how judges should be, is “Making circumstance in order to all players can attend that event without any concern”. I will help rule discussion and judge at events in other to “make circumstance in order to all players can attend that event without any concern”.