IThey were not supposed to take place, or so last year. Yet the sixteen days of competition for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – in 2021 – have just ended without our having seen them pass. There it’s finished.
No more hymns sung in chorus, no more individual or collective events, the curtain has fallen. And because these Olympic Games were those of our Tokyo tribulations, we could not come to a close without drawing up a personalized assessment of these two Japanese weeks.
We spent a month and a half, wrote twenty-three emails and made countless phone calls to try to resolve, before leaving, a problem of access to software without which we were supposed not to be able to enter Japan.
We entered Japan without this software, without any problem, and without spending as much time as the French basketball team at the airport.
We finally had access to this software three days before our departure from Tokyo.
We observed three days of confinement in a fifteen square meter hotel room upon our arrival.
We discovered, after these three days, that we were almost the only ones to have done it.
We spat into tubes every day to get tested, then every seven days, then every four days.
It was discovered that the sun of Tokyo is not the same as that of Paris, the deceitful. And we understood why Japanese tourists walk with a parasol and in full clothing in France in summer.
We saw the Eiffel Tower; finally, that of Tokyo.
We left our hotel card inside the room, which isn’t smart when you’re outside. And even less when it happens again.
We blessed the volunteers who showered the public at Fuji Speedway, where the road cycling events were held, and who kindly moistened our necks with each passage.
We put on a gray windbreaker and a shimmering scarf when we entered the Budokan to protect ourselves from the air conditioning.
We were blocked for a few seconds in front of this same Budokan by the princely convoy in an old-fashioned sedan of Prince Albert of Monaco, who had preferred a suit to his tight-fitting Olympic bobsleigh outfit.
We lost a cap the day before a day spent in the dodger on a windsurfing event. Suddenly, after having tried various stratagems against the sun, we invested in a “Tokyo 2020” cap with the most beautiful effect.
Otherwise, no, the sun is not beating at the #Olympics https://t.co/b1rotETWFb
We have seen the distress of the athletes of the Olympic Committee of Russia every time their non-anthem resounded in an enclosure. This is in no way a degrading judgment for the music of Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky.
We missed the Fijian anthem sung a cappella by a band of rugby players with a pretty tone of voice coming from achieving the double in rugby sevens.
Israeli judokas – and Israeli journalists – have been found to celebrate their victories like in a football stadium.
We ended up no longer supporting the hymn of the medal ceremonies.
We got up at 4 am, having returned at 2 am, to go take a shuttle bringing us to the start of a shuttle going to the place of the road cycling race… which only started after- midday.
We decided, after this short night, to test the taxis authorized for the followers of the Games and we transformed them into “Collectivos”, where several journalists worked together.
We saw a coach driver miss a reverse gear in the middle of the night, hear a loud “Crack”, leave part of its rear bumper on a lamppost and spend a good two hours apologizing and explaining.
We wrote articles in buses, taxis or in the corner of a parking lot, in particular …
We tasted mochis with real fruit inside.
We took over a convention center converted into a weapons room, with real fencers inside.
We listened to Claude François, Joe Dassin, Desireless, not in nightclubs, but thanks to the eclecticism of the disc jockey animating the volleyball matches.
We came across a single indelicate driver who first offered us a Tokyo by night tour – refused -, before taking a detour via a fast lane and tripling the price of the classic fare.
We blessed the grocery stores open twenty-four hours a day by returning at no time, without having eaten all day, and consumed snacks of small fried anchovies, yuzu candy, red bean ice cream …
We ended up hating food in 24-hour grocery stores.
We also thought about Japanese labor law, about the said grocery stores.
We became the most loyal customer – always for take out – of the excellent sushi restaurant located five meters from our hotel, to the point that the waitresses slipped us a word of French.
We spoke with many Japanese when we were not allowed to go near them, and we found that rather than hating the Games, as the polls claimed, they especially regretted not having access to them. .
It was found absurd that the Japanese public could not attend the various events, seeing the way in which certain stadiums were filled by delegations from all over the world.
We were told two hundred and twenty-seven times by athletes about the living conditions in the Olympic Village.
English has been read and heard much more than French, despite their common status as the official languages of the Olympics.
We discovered nicknames – dedication to “Pano”, the first French champion of the summer.
We discovered the most smiling soldiers in the world, at each passage of the checkpoint to enter the sites of the tests.
Did we set up a “morning routine” with them? “Do you have a drink? Please drink “ at each checkpoint passage, so that they can check that our water bottles only contain unmanageable elements
We got lost – in the table tennis hall instead of the Olympic stadium – and finally found ourselves in the middle of mirrored cabinets: the Spanish water polo team.
We learned to use the expression “Femé boutik”.
The volunteers were blessed for their kindness, their availability, their propensity to hold a set full of telephones recording interviews for long minutes, and their origami skills.
We said to ourselves that without the pandemic these Games would have been immeasurable.
We have never seen Mount Fuji, despite several days spent around it.
We found that even in 2021, Tokyo 2020 was good.
We found that even in 2021, Tokyo 2020 was good.