Finally had enough time to get around trying this Hide for the first time. Bought a 2kg Katsuo and a .8kg Tai for dinner. For the meal I had a chance to try skinning, hirazukuri, and sogizuki with this yanagiba. The knife feels good during cutting and it feels quite light in hand. The handle is on the smaller side too, I think; this suits me well, as I have small hands.
To give you guys a little better reference, I would compare this Hide kensaki yanagiba with Suisin Densyo yanagiba. Hide comes out to be 198g on the scale, compared with Densyo' 229g. No wonder, it felt light in hand as I have been using Densyo for a little while. Desyo also feels a little bit more stout and a little bit stiffer compared with this Hide.
Fit and Finish wise, Densyo wins by a small margin from out of the box condition. This Hide comes with mirror polish and a nicely finished overall, but mirror polish on Densyo was done better, more even, smoother, and those little details around coil, spine, tip, etc. Densyo is just a prettier knife.
Now the real deal for Hide knife, the grind. I thought that Densyo was easy to sharpen, was easy to follow the grind that Yamaguchi-san created. It is easier to follow Yamamoto-san's grind. May be from Jon's words too, but I feel that this Hide comes with even more even bevel. After a quick sharpening session, there are only a few shallow low spots left and it didn't take me too long to erase most the course grind marks and get an ok polish.