In Dai's other thread for choerographers/music suggestions, some names of the all time 'Greats', such as John Curry, Toller Cranston and Torvill & Dean were mentioned along with the video clips of their wonderful performances, which of course impressed me a great deal.
As I wrote in that thread, among the above great skaters, Toller Cranston particularly influenced Mrs. Utako Nagamitsu, Dai's long-time coach, for her direction as a professional coach.
Let me do some translation on Mrs. Utako Nagamitsu. This article is rather old; published in the spring of 2010 after Daisuke won the historic Olympic medal and very first world title by a Japanese male skater ever, but I thought it was very interesting and fascinating to get to know Utako sensei as a once competitive skater, a coach and as a person for me.
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Sources: Nikkei shimbun
Dates: May 24-26, 2010
Writer: Masako Hara
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<1> Prologue
I believe Mrs. Nagamitsu is a rare, unique, and precious coah among the current top coaches in Japan. One of her preference when training her skaters has always been 'the ability to dance', in spite of the fact that she herself was a single skater and the majority of current students under her wing are also single skaters.
And that probably was the reason why Daisuke, at age 13 with only two triples; toe loop and Salchow, caught her attention one day, and she decided to take him as her skater.
Daisuke was born and brought up in Kurashiki, Okayama pref., the southern part of Japan with sunny and warmer weather, so that winter sports are less popular (kids love and would much prefer baseball and soccer).
He started figure skating at age 8, when the big sport facilities with an ice rink opened in his neighborhood, and evetually attracted to this sport, though the local skating club did not have any professional coaches.
Even before meeting Utako sensei, he himself also loved to dance on and off the ice, without any deep knowledge or appropriate instrucitons from professional dancers. He preferred Ice Dance the best among the four disciplines. During the Winter Olympic Games at Nagano in 1998, young Dai with only four years of skating career, showed up at his local rink one afternoon, demonstrated the patterns of Compulsory Dance which he watched on TV and memorized from the night before, and surprised everyone at the rink. He even said he fell in love with all the ice dance medalists; Grishuk/Platov, Krylova/Ovsyannikov and Anissina/Peizerat.
In this regard, a lot of people believe it was not a pure accident, but rather a fate that Utako sensei ran into young Daisuke (or vice versa) one summer, at an ice rink in Sendai which was not the home for either of them.
Utako Nagamitsu *info thru Wiki, thus not 100% reliable/credible
-born: March, 1951, Hyogo pref.
-as s competitive skater: Started figure skating at age 9. Ladies single national junior champion 1966-67 season. Retired after 1971-72 season, and turned to a professional coach/choreographer.
-as a professional coach: Worlds in 1992 was her first appearance as a coach, taking Mari Asanuma.
-current home rink: Ice Skating Club, Kansei University, Osaka pref.
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(cont'd)
Not technically perfect, but I love this performance! Daisuke just doesn't let a beat of the music go by without acknowledging it. He's such a good showman, and that's a great program.
) to keep things on topic. (In case we forget, the topic is "Yay, Dai!" 
