New York ¨C With a state of emergency in place in Tokyo due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Olympics host city hasn¡¯t been as hospitable to the international press as it had hoped.
In a so-called Olympic bubble, separated from the city at large and prohibited from going too deep into the Olympic Village, the foreign press has had to cover what¡¯s close to it ¡ª mainly, Japan¡¯s ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores).
Like first-year foreign exchange students, they documented their findings on social media in formulaic, if slightly banal, photographs. , or . If hints of the pandemic failed to materialize in other media, then it was through these konbini-related images that glimpses of reality parsed through: absurd and dystopian.
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