Welcome to The Avocado’s weekly discussion of Japanese pop culture! If you were around the Day Thread at all yesterday you probably saw me screaming about &TEAM’s wildly successful Korean debut, which I will of course continue to do in the comments today. But I actually want to take a moment in today’s header to praise the two-day concert livestream I watched over the weekend. This marked the end of their first Asia tour, a special “encore” of the tour back home in Japan before heading off to their Korean debut, with two nights at Saitama Super Arena. I was originally only planning to watch the first day, but after I saw it I knew there was no way I was going to miss the chance to watch another performance live while happily chatting with my &TEAM friend online. Sure, this meant I had to wake up at 3 AM and then go to work afterwards, but it was worth it because it was seriously the greatest thing ever. I’ve just never seen anything so happy, passionate, energetic, spectacular, and genuinely heartwarming. The work they put into their performances really blew me away. They were basically going nonstop for 3 hours! They went down into the audience and danced with their fans. And sang with them. And gave them high fives. They did THREE encores! Who even does that? I wish I could show you some clips, but there aren’t any good ones available (yet), so you’ll just have to take my word for it. And check out the millions of gifs I’ve made so far. Here’s one to get you started.

And, as always…

What have you been watching/reading/playing/eating/listening to lately?

Happy Wednesday! 🍙