The show must go on! 6 more days until Tokyo Olympics.
It’s hard to imagine that Olympics will start next week while many decisions are made then updated day by day due to ever changing landscape thanks to the raging 4th wave of covid-19 accelerated by the delta variant.
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I have started to see some official merchandises at convenience stores but rather than evoking excitement, it conjure more worries.
Without Tokyo Olympics bringing 11,500 athletes and 79,000 international journalists, support staff and officials into Japan along with their hopes for sports victory and potential covid infection, we already have a lot going on.
First, what’s happening in Japan?
On July 15, Tokyo’s infection number was 1,308😱.
Amongst those infected were someone younger than 10 years old to people in their 90’s. Since the end of June, over 90% of those infected are under 50’s which is generally the population still waiting for the vaccination. More than half of overall infected population since late June are amongst 20s to 30s who are actively working and/or socialising.
Tokyo is in another state of emergency that has been extended until August 22 with many prefectures in a milder alert as cases continue to rise.
Mother Nature doesn’t seem happy either with gust of wind, torrential rain, hail, lightning and thunders causing havoc in many part of Japan including explosive manhole in Osaka that shot rainwater higher than 4 stories high due to intense rain in a short amount of time. Atami in Kanagawa prefecture suffered from horrible landslide where rescue mission is still continuing and over 500 people have lost their home.
Kagoshima in Kyushu prefecture experienced heavy rain and Kanto region (which includes Tokyo) has received a number of Tornado alert.
On top of that, Olympics have been causing headaches.
What extra chaos has Olympics brought?
14 South African athletes and 7 staff landed in Narita Airport on July 14th and were meant to train in Kagoshima however at the airport, it was identified that someone on the plane was infected with coronavirus. Of the 21 people from South Africa Olympic team, 18 were considered high risk due to their proximity to the infected person on the plane that they have been placed in the quarantine venue in Tokyo.
The hosting accommodation decorated the venue to welcome the team but it is still unclear if they can go to Kagoshima for training.
Not just from South Africa, overall 26 people who landed in Japan for Olympics so far has been tested positive with Covid-19.
Due to the rising cases, most of the sports have no spectators.
Torch relay which usually would have been a global tourism campaign for the hosting country has now been updated to “Torch Kiss” where the torch is ceremoniously passed on at venues only attended by officials and event organisers rather than the torch holder jogging along the streets in order to prevent crowd forming.
With all these reduction in number of people who can participate and due to most games being spectator-less, in the last minute, many volunteers will told that they were no longer needed.
Angered by the situation, many volunteers have placed their volunteers gear on Mercari (Japanese ebay like online selling platform). Before the Game even begun, a legitimate looking fake volunteers may be amongst the crowd which is frightening to me.
The volunteer contract does state that items can be sold but many have and has already been sold.
I have watched an interview by French sports journalist who is coming to Japan to cover the Games (who has also covered a tennis tournament at the start of the year). He commented about the fact that journalists will be GPS tracked and how Japan’s approach is much stricter than the French Open. He mentioned that it doesn’t bother him because covering sporting event is so exhausting that many journalists don’t have energy to go out and about. Many other journalists may not have shared his view as there were many tinder accounts of American guys “recently moved to Tokyo” popping up on tinder🔥.
This Summer Olympics will be like no other with raging pandemic and more than 50% of the hosting country’s population wanting it cancelled.
We will nervously wait, double mask, hand sanitise and pray that the Olympic will end without too much spike in the death toll.
I hope you have a safe weekend.
Native Expat 