Entertainment Week - It's Friday and in Tokyo we are in love with many things

 Edited BY


G P Kennedy


Ian and Minako – Tokyo, Japan

 

This week we are talking about entertainment. So, what is entertainment?


 ‘The action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment.’


 We are entertained constantly.


 We can find amusement in most things; people, pets, birds; words, and actions, even leading politicians can make us laugh.


 Enjoyment too is easily gained from the things we do ourselves in our daily life – eating, walking, talking, listening, watching, meditating, playing, hobbies etc. As we have mentioned before, not a lot has changed for us personally here in Tokyo, especially once the state of emergency was lifted. We enjoy seeing different places no matter how near or far but that has been difficult this year so far. 


 



We love art and despite the current difficulties Tokyo has continued to provide us with fun exhibitions such as the Stars exhibition of 6 contemporary Japanese artists currently on at the Mori art museum and the Yokohama Triennale, which has just ended recently.







 Live music gig have dried up completely this year. Some musicians were streaming on Instagram from their homes, which was interesting. We watched a few Badly Drawn Boy efforts and others. But once singers had exhausted their repertoire it all went quiet. So we watch a few music videos on YouTube, you watch one, and that leads on to another and another. We also listen to our own playlists, and still buy new stuff, mostly via Bandcamp.



 We signed up to both Amazon Prime and Netflix this year. The choices available on both are limited partly because they’re mostly Japanese and rarely have English subtitles. We sometimes find a film on Prime, mostly music related. Netflix has more English options; a few more home design related programmes and various foodie series. We've enjoyed watching Chef’s Table, which tells the story of many of the world's top chefs. Of course they're not vegan, we sometimes skip over the more gruesome meaty bits but it’s beautifully filmed and the life stories and their sources of inspiration can be fascinating.



 We're slowly working our way through 3 seasons of a comedy anime series called Aggretsuko featuring a cute-looking hello kitty type character who is into death metal so when she is treated badly (which happens a lot in her office) she lets off steam by screaming metal songs into her karaoke microphone in the washroom. Makes us laugh anyway but it's also a commentary on how badly workers are treated, especially at junior level and even worse for young women. Does working from home make things any easier or worse?







 Overall our entertainment revolves around food – cooking as well as eating; nature – watching the cute birds and playful puppies in the park and the changing seasons; art – viewing rather than doing and we entertain each other by being just a bit eccentric, lol. As long as we can stay clear of COVID and other catastrophes we'll continue to have fun.


x

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