> I didn't see semicolons, but I saw plenty of {} braces, and I can't explain why they're needed.

"Curly braces" (a.k.a. "{}") make lexicographical scope simpler to manage for lexers and parsers. Alternate grammars increase compiler complexity, excluding trivial token replacement.

As for semicolons, they are only a linguistic requirement for supporting multiple executable statements on the same source-code line.