![]() Toyota, one of the IOC’s top 15 sponsors, pulled its Games-related advertising off television in Japan because of public discontent about holding the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic. But many sponsors complained openly in the runup to the Games that their investment was wasted without fans. Tokyo organizers raised a record $3.3 billion from domestic sponsors, driven by giant Japanese advertising company Dentsu, Inc. That shortfall will have to be picked up by Japanese government entities - likely the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The postponement and a subsequent ban on fans also wiped out virtually all ticket sales income, which was budgeted at $800 million. Officials say the delay added $2.8 billion to the final total. Tokyo, of course, saw costs soar with the postponement. Everybody is seen to benefit, and the financial interests of the not-for-profit IOC are hidden behind national flags, pomp and ceremony, and heart-tugging stories about athletes winning gold and beating the pandemic. The blur around costs - and who pays - allows the IOC to pitch the Olympics as a global party that brings the world together and promotes world peace. Our numbers do not,” Flyvberg wrote in an email. “The numbers for Beijing and Sochi likely include wider infrastructure costs: roads, rail, airports, hotels, etc. The 2008 Beijing Olympics, usually listed as costing more than $40 billion, and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics - priced at $51 billion - are often singled out incorrectly as the most expensive. “The problem is disentangling what is Olympics cost and what is just general infrastructure spending that would have happened anyways but was sped up for the Olympics.” Victor Matheson, who studies sports economics at College of the Holy Cross, wrote in an email.įor example: The 1964 Tokyo Games, he says, “were either one of the cheapest or one of the most expensive Games depending on how much of the preparation costs count as the Olympics.” Flyvberg explained that numbers from different games can be “opaque and non-comparable” and require sorting and tracking. Flyvberg also pointed out that costs would be reduced if the IOC picked up more of the bills rather than opening organizers’ wallets.įollowing costs is a tedious exercise, dotted with arguments about what are - and what are not - Olympic expenses. “The IOC and host cities have no interest in tracking costs, because tracking tends to reveal cost overruns, which have increasingly become an embarrassment to the IOC and host cities,” Oxford author Bent Flyvberg said in an email. Tokyo’s cost overrun is 111% or 244% depending on which cost figure you select. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.Olympic costs have been dissected in a study by the University of Oxford, which found that all Games since 1960 have had cost overruns averaging 172%. Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. There will be 108-the number of pupils the school had 12 years ago. This evening, memorial bamboo lanterns will be lit in the schoolyard. Still, I hope they will be preserved for posterity and serve as places where forgetful people like me can visit, talk with the locals and keep the memories alive. ![]() Some people say these facilities bring back memories that are too painful and also point out their maintenance costs. The school building has since been opened to the public as a tsunami memorial site, and a memorial museum has also been built in Okawa to highlight the extent of the damage and provide other information. And they never really got their answers, even when the Sendai District Court concluded, after five years and seven months of examining the case, that "the children's lives could have been saved." These questions tormented the bereaved families. Why didn't the school use its buses to evacuate its pupils? Why was Okawa Elementary the only school in the area that lost so many of its children? "Why couldn't (the kids) climb up the hill?" Konno mumbled. The gently sloping terrain enabled the tsunami to travel as far as 3.7 kilometers inland from the mouth of the river, swallowing up the Okawa district. After a minute or so, we reached a concrete landing, high above the point hit by the tsunami. Konno led me up a hill right behind the school. My guide was Hiroyuki Konno, 61, who lost his son, Daisuke, a sixth-grader. ![]() Until 12 years ago, children rode unicycles and held "hanami" cherry blossom viewing parties in the schoolyard. My eyes took in a connecting corridor that had collapsed seaward, its support pillars bent out of shape conspicuously buckled and warped floors and a clock that had stopped at 3:37, the time the tsunami struck. I visited Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, where 74 pupils and 10 teachers perished in the tsunami of March 11, 2011.
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