Tokyo 2020

2020 Year of the Rat: Hopes for a Prosperous Olympic Year

Happy 2020 New Year from the olympians

Welcome to 2020!

Welcome to the Year of the Rat!

While the “rat” in English tends to have negative connotations, in terms of the Chinese zodiac, the rat is seen in a very positive light.

In Chinese culture, the rat is energetic, alert, flexible, witty and full of life. The rat, because of it’s reproductive prowess, is a symbol of wealth.

As the Chinese zodiac runs on 12-year cycles, and the Olympics run on 4-year cycles, there have been a large number of Olympiads, both summer and winter, held in the Year of the Rat.

Year of the Rat

Summer

Winter

1900

Paris

1912

Stockholm

1924

Paris

Chamoix

1936

Berlin

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

1948

London

St. Moritz

1960

Rome

Squaw Valley

1972

Munich

Sapporo

1984

Los Angeles

Sarajevo

1996

Atlanta

2008

Beijing

2020

Tokyo

You can see a few selection trends via the above table. Initially, the Olympics were highly European-centric, with a shift to North America towards the end of the 20th century. The 21st century has seen a shift towards Asia, including three Olympiads in a row held in Asia (2018 – PyeongChang, 2020 – Tokyo, and 2022 – Beijing).

The 1972 Sapporo Olympics, only 8 years after Japan’s triumphant hosting of the Summer Olympics in 1964, were also a success. Not only did Japan win its first gold medals in a Winter Olympiad, it is said that the Sapporo Games turned a profit. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were considered the first Olympiad to make money as well.

So while the Olympics in general are not profit-making events, the Year of the Rat and its aura of prosperity may make a difference in the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics. By many measures, Tokyo2020 is already a success.

So if you smell a rat this year, that may be a good thing.

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Bouldering in Hachioji: Hint of the Excitement to Come at Tokyo 2020

Four Walls at IFSC Tournament

Preparing for the Tokyo Olympics can make you climb the walls.

For Akiyo Noguchi, it’s been well worth it. The 29-year-old professional rock climber won the IFSC Climbing Worldcup in the discipline of bouldering on Sunday, June 3, 2018 in front of a energetic crowd at Esforta Arena in Hachioji, Tokyo.

Akiyo Noguchi wins

Competing for well over a decade, Noguchi has a chance to compete in sports climbing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a sport that was officially selected only two years ago in 2016.

Bouldering consists of climbs up a series of four walls, each with different designs of shapes that offer the slightest of hand and foot holds. The competitors are kept in an isolation room without access to their smartphones, and brought out to examine the designs of the walls for a couple of minutes before they are shuttled back into the isolation room.

Studying the wall

Then they are brought out in groups (as in the qualification rounds) or individually (as in the finals), and have 4 minutes to climb a wall, and touch a specified target hold at the top of the wall. Watching the video will make this easier to understand.

 

When sports climbing debuts, it will be a combined event, with men and women competing in three events – lead climbing, speed climbing and bouldering – the scores of each event tallied together to produce the winners.

Sports climbing is becoming hugely popular in Japan – neighborhood businesses with climbing walls are sprouting up all over Japan. In fact, Esforta was filled with kids for the IFSC Climbing Worldcup cheering on some of the best bouldering talent in the world from Japan.

Sports Climbing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics may be a ton of fun.

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USA House at the PyeongChang Olympics: Home Away from Home for Americans

USA House 11
Peter Zeytoonjian of the United States Olympic Committee

Hey, there’s Bonnie Blair, the speed skater. Grab that seat near the screen – ice hockey’s up. Oh look, Michelle Kwan’s in the house! Oh, cool, the burgers are out! I hear Shaun White’s coming tonight.

USA House in PyeongChang. It’s kinda like the bar in Cheers!, where everybody knows your name.

For Americans, many of whom have been to many Olympics, USA House is an oasis Americana in PyeongChang, a place where Team USA athletes, friends and family, sponsors, donors and staff can be at home.

USA House 12
Me and Dmitry Feld

Dmitry Feld, a retired luge coach for Team USA, said “at USA House, you meet friends and family, Olympic athletes. You eat American food, and watch the American TV broadcast. It’s like being back home.”

For Kathryn Whalen, it’s the end of a long great ride of working the Olympics in her meetings and events role in corporate communications for McDonald’s. She’s grateful for USA House, “especially if it’s in a foreign culture you’re not used to, because you have everything from strong internet, to American food, to the NBC feed of the Olympic Games broadcast.”

USA House 1

Getting in USA House is part of the charm. “It’s hard to get in,” said Whalen, “so this place has prestige, which is cool.”

Cookie and Kate Reed-Dellinger are Olympics super fans. He’s been to 16 Games, while she’s been to nine, and they always enjoy the hospitality at USA House. “When I get back to my hotel room,” said Cookie, “I can only watch the Games only in Korean, and only what the Koreans want to see. But here, we can watch American television, eat American food, and see Team USA athletes here all the time.”

Shortly after, Cookie pointed out figure skater and two-time Olympic medalist, Michelle Kwan, and went up to her to shake her hand.

USA House 25
Cookie and Kate Reed-Dellinger with Michelle Kwan in the middle.

Peter Zeytoonjian, sr. vice president of marketing for the United States Olympic Committee, has organized USA House for the past six Winter and Summer Olympic Games. The former marketing leader for the NFL, Zeytoonjian said that USA Houses in the Olympic Winter Games are usually on the smaller side to accommodate the size of the winter delegation and expected number of visitors. USA House in PyeongChang is a full-service 2,000 square meter structure which holds about 100 people at a time. It has an admittedly great view of the mountains where alpine ski events were held.

He said that Tokyo American Club will be a significantly larger venue for USA House at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Tokyo 2020 is shaping up to be a great Olympic Games and we think that USA House at Tokyo American Club has the potential to be one of the best houses we’ve ever organized. It’s an incredible building in a great location, perfectly suited for welcoming Team USA athletes and supporters during the Games. We are already well into planning – and excited about what’s to come.

USA House 22

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The Tokyo 2020 Cycling Road Race to Include Iconic Mt Fuji

Torch Runner in front of Mt Fuji_Ichikawa film
Torch Runner passing the front of Mt Fuji, from the Kon Ichikawa film, Tokyo Olympiad. Click on the image to see this scene at the 9 minute 30 second mark to see.

In 1964, the cycling road race in Hachioji, a suburban area in Western Tokyo, was considered too easy, which allowed too much bunching of elite and mediocre racers during the bulk of the race. In 2020, the road race route “will be tough, with a lot of difference in elevation,” according to this Japan Times article.

More importantly, for the viewer, the backdrop will be wonderful. The 2020 route will take Olympian cyclists by the foot of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture. According to the article, the 270-km course will start near Musashino Forest Sport Center (not far from ASIJ, the school to which my son cycled to every day), and continue through National Route 413 all the way to scenic Lake Yamanaka and Mt Fuji.

According to Cycling Weekly, the organizers said that the race might even include a climb up Mt Fuji.

The final major obstacle of the men’s road race should be another long climb of around 15km, going half way up the side of the iconic Mount Fuji. This is likely to be crested with around 36km to go, half of which will be a descent before a flat or rolling run-in to the finish line back on the Fuji Speedway circuit. If this mountainous course is confirmed by the organising committee, the men’s race will feature more than 5,000m of climbing and be the longest race since professional riders were allowed to compete in 1996.

Reports are that the women’s 143-km road race will also have a similar route but will have less climbing.

In 1964, Mt Fuji was certainly one of the top five things a visiting Olympian would know about Japan. Some may have seen it on the plane ride into Tokyo. But most could not see it even if they wanted as the Tokyo skies were filled with the soot and dust of industry and construction. Additionally, it rained a good part of the Tokyo Olympics.

In July and August, 2020, the competitors in Tokyo will still unlikely be able to see Mt Fuji – the skies usually don’t become clear enough until the Autumn and Winter months. But the cyclists will have a front row view from their bikes.

As a side note, I did as well in the Autumn of 2005. I stupidly joined a bunch of young but experienced mountain bikers who convinced me that biking up and down Mt Fuji is a blast. As you can see in the picture below, I did not fare well, wondering how I did not break any bones hurtling down steep slopes of lava rock.

Ah, Mt Fuji….

Fujiyama2_November2005

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Cut Another Billion

IOC Vice President John Coates and President of Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic organising committee Yoshiro Mori attend a news conference in Tokyo
International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President John Coates (L) and President of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic organizing committee Yoshiro Mori attend a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday. Photo: REUTERS

The budget for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics ballooned from $7.5 billion, presented during the bid process in 2013, to $30 billion a few years later.

Conscious of the distaste the citizens of most major cities have for holding an Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee has been working hard to get the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee to slash the budget. Currently it stands around $12 billion. But John Coates, who is the head of the IOC’s Coordination Commission for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, wants to get the number down further.

“That’s the target that we think should be achievable not just by Tokyo but by all summer organizing committees,” said Coates, referring to the new goal of $11 billion. “What we are trying to do is create a situation where there is no strain on the public purse.”

A likely target of the budget knife is the Olympic Village, where Coates believes that the level of service can be diminished enough to reduce the budget significantly.

For example, The Washington Post said Coates gave an example of “shortening the length of time athletes are allowed to stay,” or to make beds transferrable, “which would mean shuffling athletes or team staff out early to make room for those who might be competing later in the Games.”

Another example, explained in Japan Today, is cutting staff for the Olympic family lounges, which according to Coates, operate at only 40% capacity on average.

However, Rich Perelman, editor of the Sports Examiner calls Coates out on the challenge of trying to nickle-and-dime down the costs of the Olympic Village by focusing on service. He points to the fact that the number of athletes have risen every Olympics since 2004. The Rio Olympics hosted 11,238 athletes, well over the 10,500 recommended in the Olympic Charter.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are expected to have a higher count. And while there are hints that the IOC wants the various national olympic committees to cut the number of participating athletes and officials, Perelman points out that the IOC is contributing to the increased headcount by encouraging the introduction of new sports, like surfing, sport climbing and skateboarding.

The IOC and the Tokyo 2020 organizers are further complicit in exacerbating the costs for the coming Games by adding – unnecessarily – five sports, 18 events and 474 more athletes (not to mention support staff – to the Games program because the events will supposedly “appeal to youth.”

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The Massive Urban Mines of Japan to Yield Olympic Medals for Tokyo 2020

japan ewaste
Japan’s Urban Mines – it’s electronic waste

It’s estimated that to make all of the gold, silver and bronze medals to provide to all the expected top three winners of all Olympic events, the manufacturer would need 9.6 kilograms of gold, 1,210 kilograms of silver, and another 700 kilograms of copper, which is the main component of bronze.

it is the goal of the Tokyo 2020 organizers to award athletes at the 2020 Games with medals created from 100% recycled materials. Instead of resource-poor Japan buying from the reserves and mines of other countries, the nation will mine its own growing stash of hidden resources – its urban mines.

An urban mine is a metaphor for all of the electronic goods a rich society buys, consumes and throws away, which also house a collectively massive amount of precious or rare elements. By that definition, Japan is loaded, according to this research from 2009:

A considerable amount of metal was estimated to be accumulated in Japan. The accumulation amount of gold and silver is 6,800 tons and 60,000 tons respectively. They are greater than the reserves of richest resource-possessing country, South Africa for gold and Poland for silver.

To uncover the riches stored in our electronic waste, Tokyo 2020, the Japanese Government and wireless provider NTT-DoCoMo, among a variety of public-private partners, kicked off a campaign in April to collect used and unneeded smartphones, PCs, displays, digital cameras, PC displays, MP3 players, handheld video game players, or calculators.

Takeshi Matsuda donating phone for recycling at an NTT-DoCoMo outlet
Olympic swimmer Takeshi Matsuda donating phone for recycling at an NTT-DoCoMo outlet

According to Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto, about 500,000 mobile phones have already been collected, which is a good start. “This is not enough to make all the medals,” he admitted, “but we still have a lot of leeway because some people outside Tokyo still are not aware of the program. There is a lack of recognition, so we have much more work to do in creating excitement and being even more creative to have wise ways to collect these metals.”

Japan can do this now because they had set up the process four years before, when the government passed The Act on Promotion of Recycling Small Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. The government was then able to certify 45 recycling operators nationally to receive small electric and electronic devices collected by local governments and then to sort, dismantle and send them to smelters to recover metals. According to this report from Japan for Sustainability, in the first year of this project,

a total of 13,236 tons of small electric and electronic devices were sent to certified operators. Some had been collected by municipalities across the nation (9,772 tons) and others had been brought directly to the operators by citizens and companies. They broke the devices down into their parts and sorted them, sending 8,582 tons to the smelters. Among the metals extracted from them, iron accounted for the largest portion in weight (6,599 tons), followed by aluminum (505 tons) and copper (381 tons). Extracted precious metals including gold and silver amounted to 494 kilograms.

Amazing.

If you are interested in contributing to the production of the first Olympic medals molded from metals recycled from Japan’s massive urban mines, then gather those unneeded phones and small electronic devices and donate them to the cause. Take your mobile phones and tablets to your local NTT-DoCoMo store, or follow these instructions if you want to send your PC and other larger items for recycling. (Yes, this applies to people living in Japan only, and unfortunately the instructions are in Japanese only.)

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Heatstroke Fears at the Tokyo 2020 Marathon

running in heat

Imagine it’s Sunday, August 9, 2020, the final day of the Tokyo Olympics. The marathon has started, tens of thousands of people are lining the route, and the morning sun is radiating a furnace room of heat.

On August 9 this year (2017), the temperature hit a high of 37 degrees Celsius, or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot man! And potentially dangerous for runners, as well as spectators. According to Makoto Yokohari, a professor of city planning at the University of Tokyo, in August the temperature at the location of the national stadium in Tokyo gets to 30 degrees at 7:30 am, and rises to the mid 30s in Asakusa, the mid-way point of the 2020 marathon. Yokohara adds in this article that much of the route, especially around the Imperial Palace, is not under shade.

Runner’s WorldFor runners, the fastest times often come in cool weather, in a range of 4.5 °C (40 °F) to about 13 °C (55°F), according to this analysis from Runner’s World. But when you run a marathon in hot weather, your body will rebel. According to this article from Scientific America, marathoners need blood to go in two directions at the same time – to your muscles to deliver oxygen and keep your muscles pumping, and to your skin so that your body can cool down. When it’s really hot, unfortunately, the blood that goes to the muscles that are getting a work out, gets even hotter, and the blood that gets to the surface doesn’t cool down. You sweat more, you dehydrate, and your body reacts with heat cramps, heat exhaustion, or even heatstroke.

The mother of all heat related illnesses. Your body temperature rises above 105 degrees F and it becomes a life-threatening situation. Most often, heatstroke results from untreated heat exhaustion, although it’s very possible for heatstroke to come about with no signs of heat exhaustion. Heatstroke is characterized by extreme fatigue and weakness, confusion and odd behavior, disorientation and finally unconsciousness. Your body’s regulatory system completely shuts down at this point, sweating ceases, and your skin becomes hot and dry. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Convulsions and seizures can occur as your brain begins to shut down; coma and death are possible in the worst situations. GET OUT OF THE HEAT IMMEDIATELY! Seek medical attention, get in the shade, drink water, etc anything to get cooled down! You do NOT want to get to this point.

running in heat 2

For us pedestrians, succumbing to the heat is commonplace in August, according to Akio Hoshi, a professor of health science at Toin University of Yokohama. “The number of people transported by ambulance due to heatstroke or heat exhaustion has peaked in early August in recent years. So the Tokyo Olympics fall in the period with the highest risk,” Hoshi said.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in October, and the weather was primarily wet and cold….preferable conditions to the marathoners of 2020.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2020: Stay Tuned for Tokyo 2020’s Closing Ceremony on the 75th Anniversary of the Nagasaki Bombing

Hiroshima torch relay
The torch relay passing through Hiroshima prior to the start of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, from the book 1964 Tokyo Olympiad Kyodo News Agency

One thing certain about the dates of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics: July 24 to August 9, 2020. It will be hot and muggy!

One less obvious thing recently occurred to me about the dates. The final week of the Tokyo Olympics falls on the 75th anniversaries of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Was it intended to bring attention to the worst days in Japanese history, during the proudest days of the nation’s history?

Of course it was. It’s impossible to imagine that no one in the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee or the IOC noticed that the closing ceremonies of the Olympics would take place on the day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, thus expediting the eventual end of the war six days later.

On the contrary, the organizers must have thought that the final day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics would be an opportunity to solemnly (and hopefully tastefully) implore the world that peace and love trump war and hate.

Such a closing ceremony would provide a poetic bookend to the opening ceremony of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Only 19 years removed from the end of WWW II, it was a 19-year-old student from Waseda University named Yoshinori Sakai who carried the sacred flame up the National Stadium’s steps to light the Olympic cauldron on October 10, 1964.

Sakai was born in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the very day that the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb called “Little Boy” on Sakai’s hometown.

All he was saying was give peace a chance.

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Tokyo 2020 Venues Get Thumbs Up from NOCs: Take a Look at the Heritage and Tokyo Bay Area Zones

nocs-visit-tokyo_february2017
Representatives of various National Olympic Committees are given tours of 26 Olympic venues, including Ajinomoto Stadium in Tokyo on Monday. | PHOTO COURTESY OF TOKYO 2020 / UTA MUKUO / VIA KYODO
When you think about the number of events in an Olympic Games, and the varied types and sizes of venues required for a mega-sports event like the Olympics, one wonders why we would saddle an emerging economy with such a beast of a logistics and budget burden. Sochi, Rio and Athens are recent examples of this challenge.

While Japan was an emerging economy in 1964, its economy was booming and could absorb the massive change and cost with ease. And when we look at the Paris and Los Angeles bids for 2024, one gets the sense that they are at an advantage due to their already massive and modern infrastructure along with its varied and numerous sports facilities packed into their metropolitan areas.

Tokyo has that advantage as well and was able to propose in its bid that 90 percent of the sports venues would be within 8 kilometers of the Olympic Village. Tokyo2020 has framed the physical footprint in an infinity loop which encloses two areas: the Heritage Zone and the Tokyo Bay Zone. The Heritage Zone represents facilities that are in and around the area of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the Shinjuku – Yoyogi area. That would include the location of the National Stadium, both then and in 2020. The Tokyo Bay Zone is primarily reclaimed land about 3.2 km southeast of central Tokyo. This will include the site of the Olympic Village in Harumi.

On February 10, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee hosted visitors from the National Olympic Committees from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and New Zealand. For three days they got a guided tour of 26 of the approximately 40 venues planned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And the reviews, apparently, are good.

infinity-heritage-and-tokyo-bay-area-zones
Heritage and Tokyo Bay Zones
Here are a few comments from Luke Pelligrini, the acting general manager of games support and operations for the Australian Olympic Committee:

  • Across all the NOCs in the bus yesterday, everyone was saying this is going to be a good games. Everyone is confident that it’s on track, ahead of the game at the moment and will continue to be.
  • (Some of the venues) looked like they could run sporting events next week. The taekwondo and fencing venue (Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture) literally looked like it could stage sporting events next week if it needed to. The 1964 stadiums for table tennis, the water polo, they look ready to go now. In that respect, we are thrilled. We don’t see anything, 3½ years out, that is a concern to us. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the experience
  • The most impressive thing is how central 70 percent of the venues are. We were amazed at the location of the Olympic village literally being downtown. That is a fantastic opportunity for our athletes to experience the games and also Tokyo. It is a very central location to get to the venues for all our athletes.

Here is a great video explaining the venue locations planned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

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Astro-Boy and Sailor Moon: Here to Save the World and Make Tokyo 2020 a Lot of Moolah

tokyo-2020-anime-ambassadors
Tokyo 2020 Anime Ambassadors

A big part of the pitch for the 2020 Games by the Japan Olympic Committee to the IOC in 2013 was that the Tokyo Olympics would appeal to youth. Along those lines, new sports added to the Games in 2020 are skateboarding, surfing and rock climbing.

At the Tokyo 2020 preview at the end of the Rio Olympics closing ceremony, the world was pleasantly surprised by the emergence of Prime Minister Abe as the world-renown game character, Super Mario.

And last week, Tokyo2020 announced the lineup of its anime ambassadors for the Tokyo Olympics. They include such globally recognized characters as Sailor Moon, Goku from Dragon Ball, Crayon Shin-chan and a classic character that was a huge hit in Japan in the 1950s and was broadcast in the US in the 1960s, Astro Boy.

Anime, the catch-all phrase for Japanese produced comics or animated television or film, has enjoyed a boom internationally. It is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone. Japanese manga in English can be found liberally in bookstores or online. Japanese anime film directors like Hayao Miyazaki and Osamu Tezuka are global icons. And of course, illustrated characters from Japanese games, television programs and films are re-drawn in daydream doodles, their costumes adorned, and their merchandise snapped up the world over.

So yes, who will begrudge the TOCOG (Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee) the opportunity to make a few extra gazillion yen with Tokyo2020-Sailor Moon bags, and Tokyo2020-Dragon Ball hats.

You can buy your Tokyo2020 swag here.

astro-boy
I am a proud owner of a Osamu Tezuka Astro Boy original, drawn for my father in the early 1970s.
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