Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony 2021

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics is here and you have to feel a bit sorry for Japan. Hosting an Olympics costs a fortune but the theory is that visitors will pay back some of the investment and afterward you have a lot of lovely stadiums. So, hopefully, they can still enjoy the latter. You know, in a year or so when people are allowed to go.

Everyone loves a good opening ceremony. I was in London in 2012 and despite fears that our opening ceremony might be a bit lackluster compared to the Chinese Olympics, it was actually awesome. I remember it well as I had a deadline that night and was trying to write and watch at the same time. The Olympics in London was actually pretty fun and I wrote about it here.

A good ceremony is supposed to show off what is special about that country. The UK is very creative, so we had music, science, James Bond, and Mr Bean. China has impressive control over its people and was able to order people to wear nappies while they practiced. Japan is all about tech, gaming, manga and so on. Or at least that is what YouTube has decided to show me.

Google’s Japanese Olympics – a surprisingly fun game

One very cool thing Google has done is to have a fun game done in an old-school 8-bit 2D kind of way. Like old Final Fantasy games or Pokemon. It is essentially a load of mini-games and I spent most of the morning trying them out for, erm, research. If you can, give it a go. It looks like this:

I am happy to say, I have completed them all. I found the marathon the hardest, it took a couple of goes to win. They are all pretty easy though, especially if you had a childhood like mine.

The Olympic opening ceremony videos

I suspect better ones will be along but for now, here a couple. The first is a pictogram thing, were some people try to act out 50 pictograms. It is quite fun.

Next up is dancing to a load of music from games. Famous ones too, according to the comments. I have played Final Fantasy XIII but sadly, failed to notice this is the music from a boss fight. There is also, apparently, Kingdom Hearts, SaGa, Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, and Nier Automata. Essentially, Square Enix/Capcom games. The internet can be impressive sometimes, even YouTube comments!

Finally fireworks and a very cool thing with drones.

Now all that is left is the actual sport. Which I quite enjoy. Unlike other sports, the crowd doesn’t really add much to the atmosphere of most events, so it should be quite fun. I don’t know why, but I really enjoy archery. And women’s pole vaulting (because it is very competitive).

Anyway, support the Olympics and buy lots of Japanese goods, they will need the cash. You can get more info on the official site. I’m off to play Final Fantasy games.