The Olympics in Tokyo (English)

Notice

This post is just a personal opinion. This is NOT something related to my job or any organization(s) I belong to.

Olympics in Tokyo

As I live in Tokyo and work for a global company, I often get asked something like “How is Tokyo? Olympics are coming, right? How do you feel about it?”

Since the Olympics will be closing today, I just wanted to leave some note as one of a citizen living in and working in Tokyo.

Feel Awkward

When Tokyo has decided to have the Olympics as scheduled I felt a little awkward, because Tokyo was locked down due to COVID-19 and we were in a very sensitive situation towards the breakdown of the medical care.

As a citizen, I wasn’t very aware of people from other countries bringing in their delta viruses but was more cynical for the mindset of certain numbers of citizens hanging out as if COVID-19 was not a fear at all.

Since we are having the Olympics, there is no strong reason for some of the citizens to stay in their homes. That many people started to quit staying in their homes and started hanging around the cities compared to the same day same month of the previous year.

Also, since the committee has decided to have Olympics without audiences, I felt like the events are happing outside Japan, even though they are happening beside me in the same city.

Overall Comment

Well, as a result, watching the athletes on the TV, I am feeling happy that we could hold the Olympics as re-planned.

I know the Olympics are one of the great traditional sports festivals, and they excite us a lot and bring us a lot of impressions and connect the world firmly through games. I think people’s life and health should be treated with the highest priority – higher than this traditional event, however, I think the Olympics itself was not very impacted on the citizens in Tokyo. More and more people are infected with COVID-19, but I think it’s because they are not staying in their homes as requested and recommended by the government.

Of course, I do have things that I didn’t like very much with this Olympics, but overall I was very impressed by the games and I would like to give a big thank you to all the people who have engaged for this big event.