They’re still calling it Tokyo 2020. I guess they had everything designed and didn’t want to change it.
The 5,000 medals are made completely from e-waste. The Japanese donated all their electronic crap and factories spent hours and hours extracting the precious metals. I think that’s cool.
Hey Steve Kornacki! Kornacki’s Khakis back in effect! You give me those stats I neither needed or wanted, Steve! Glad to hear ’em!
Okay, official opening ceremony has started. There is no audience in the stadium. It gives it a kind of gravitas.
Wait a minute, the Emperor of Japan is wearing a boring West-style suit? Dude, he’s the Emperor. I would wear the fanciest robes and accoutrement I have in my vault. Lord knows one doesn’t get too many opportunities to rock your finest Appointed-by-God attire.
Beautiful opening video.
They have an enormous Mt. Fugi with an orb on top to represent the true name of Japan, Land of the Rising Sun.
The flag also represents Land of the Rising Sun. Which is why I think this design for the Tokyo Olympics is better than the one they chose.
They’re using a lot of light painting on the floor and it is gorgeous. One of my favorite examples of that is this Kylie Minogue video.
Oooo, they got real weird and performance-arty with this. I feel like this MoMA thing is going to go over the head of… most of everyone in the world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous but it’s a bit more Twyla Tharp-y then I think this audience can handle.
Didn’t think during the portion on the rich history of Japanese carpentry there would be tap-dancing but okay. It definitely conveys wood is hard.
Oh hell yeah, the lesbian goth hand-voguing girls Ayabambi are there! Bold move!
Okay, they’re making up countries at this point. Comoros? And every island in the Caribbean is its own country? My U.S. public school education is showing.
The people walking the teams in and cheering on the sides represent manga comics. I love how each country’s sign is in the manga screaming talk bubble. When the characters speak normally, it’s plain round speech bubbles.
But when the characters scream, there are lines like rays of light shooting outward.
Due to that, I read every country’s name as a shrieking harpy.
All the countries are in. And now they’re doing some horribly awkward thing in bad wigs with colored boxes to show unity and I’m out. Nighty-night everyone.
P.S. Immediately after I turned off the TV there was some awesome stuff with 1800 drones. But there was a epically cringe-y version of “Imagine” that rotted my teeth so I ain’t sad about that.
Here’s the drone portion.