Ikarus360

Notre-Dame cathedral: Firefighters tackle blaze in Paris https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47941794 Yeaaaaaah....that's going to be a LOT of money to be spent in the reconstruction. Will most likely lead to budget cuts to the Olympic project for sure.

Torch relay design and route were unveiled some days ago. They also plan on bringing it to Montblanc, the highest mountain in Europe. https://minsk2019.by/en/news/1032

And just like that, this bid race got much more interesting now. Guess the IOC must be sighing in relief.

Welp. This was a big plot twist. Considering the IOC is totally not biased in favor of bringing the games back to Scandinavia, Cortina is going to have a tougher road than they thought to win. Italy could still get this,though.

I can see the symbol represents the Tomoe which is often displayed in Taiko drums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoe

Cultural Olympiad logo was shown today in a video which makes a pretty nice use of the Look to be honest.

The Mario & Sonic games usually always show more or less the look the games they end up wearing (with some minor changes regarding its arrangement). And I kind of believe it since its pretty much using the Hanabi motif they said would be the main element of the look, which they're also using on the website. Some examples Vancouver 2010 London 2012 Sochi 2014 Rio 2016

Took some screenshots from the trailer of the videogames. Seems this is how the Look will be.

This was actually one month ago but since no one posted it here I might as well do it. The budget for the ceremonies was increased. We also have the official costs for the show. https://www.insidesport.co/tokyo-olympics-opening-closing-ceremonies-to-cost-43-more-report/ So, pretty much, a budget lower than London's but still far bigger than Rio's (which was around the numbers of 55$). I think the number is pretty decent and i'm sure the japanese will make good use to it to put on a good show. Also, I know it's kind of early to make theories about the Opening, but take a close look at the diagonal structures on the field in this recent picture.

Some new pics from the inside. Close up detail of the roof Also it seems they're starting to plant the trees both outside and on the exterior rings of the stadium. Render How it is looking so far

If things don't change from now one it's safe to assume Cortina-Milan already has this on the bag. As much as the IOC is obsessed with scandinavia, there's no way they will force the games in a country which just doesn't want to host them.

Finally we got the mascots with the sports disciplines. https://i.imgur.com/NhO3QN1.jpg https://i.imgur.com/N3TZ6ck.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gRinyTQ.jpg if you wanna see them in better quality go here: https://news.mynavi.jp/photo/article/20190401-800077/images/028l.jpg

The name of the new Japanese era which begins on May 1st (after Akihito abdication) was just announced: Reiwa. Miraitowa & Someity were also at the unveiling

Since these games pretty much use the look that always end up being in the actual games, I can see the Look is quite simple and pretty much integrates the logo itself. It somewhat reminds me of Atlanta 96 quilt but using blue and pink nstead of olive green. Also nice detail using Yoshinobu Miyake (1964 gold medalist in weightlifting) for the ad. I wonder if he will end up being one of the final torchbearers.

They managed to actually make the 2014 World Cup opening good. It's even worse than I remember. Is dissapointing the football ceremonies in recent years have been trying too hard to look like Superbowl halftime shows (ever since 2016 all Champions League finals have been turned into glorified concerts of american singers instead of actually depicting the culture of the host country). Also it's a bit of a letdown we're in 2019 and still no videos of either the 1994 or 1998 opening ceremonies of the commonwealth games. And I think it has been mostly a matter of laziness from uploaders rather than material not being available, since I often find fragments of the 1998 closing (though its much harder to find ones of the opening).