With ten days to go before the start of the Olympic Games, the Athletes’ Village in Tokyo has opened its doors. Normally a meeting place and also a party zone, this time strict Corona rules apply to the athletes. Some people may wonder where are the 2020 Olympics, so in this article, we will introduce the Tokyo Olympic village.
Some 18,000 athletes and officials will live in the 21 buildings within the 44-hectare Olympic Village in Tokyo Bay. An increasing number of delegations have already arrived in Japan, with more than 2,200 participants expected by the end of this week.
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Tokyo Olympic Village: A floating city
The Olympic Village was built in a few years. Constructed on a spit of land reclaimed from the sea, the Olympic Village is certainly enough to make you squirm: there are 21 buildings of 14 to 18 floors on 44 hectares. All this with a nice view on the Tokyo bay and the famous Rainbow Bridge. The area is expected to host the 18,000 athletes invited to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games for a month this summer.
Finished at the end of December 2019, the construction cost about 1.9 billion dollars. It was revealed in the Japanese press that at least several dozen Japanese workers were employed without a proper contract, up to twenty-eight days a month.
Stay tuned to know more about where are the 2020 Olympics will take place and the Tokyo village.
Green City
The aim of Tokyo is to make its village a model eco-district. As a result, electricity and hot water for the entire area will be produced from hydrogen using fuel cells. The shuttles carrying the athletes to the various sports venues will be similarly powered.
Among the buildings, the “Village Plaza”, the complex which will serve as a place of socialization and services for the athletes, consisting of banks, hairdressing salons and a tourist office, has been built using 40,000 pieces of wood provided by some 60 Japanese municipalities. This facility will then be dismantled and the beams recycled for other local constructions. In the following, we will take a closet look at the Village Plaza.
Cardboard and latex
What about the athletes’ rooms? They are also eco-friendly. The beds of the athletes are made of cardboard by the company Airweave. This has worried the Australian basketball player Andrew Bogut. “Very good initiative … until the athletes finish their competition and the thousands of condoms that were distributed in the village will begin to be used,” he had tweeted.
The firm had officially responded that “as long as they stick to two people in the bed, then they should be strong enough to handle the load.” While Tokyo has not yet released the number of condoms distributed, London had planned for 140,000 in 2012. Way behind the 450,000 ordered by Rio in 2016. That means 42 condoms per athlete. Stay tuned to know more about where are the 2020 Olympics will take place and the Tokyo village.
Real estate tile
So what if this Olympic village was never built? As a result of the postponement of the Games to 2021, the local organization had to fight to keep the same facilities as those planned this summer. Toshiro Muto, the head of Tokyo 2020, said in June that an understanding had been reached for 80% of the sites.
However, the Olympic Village was not part of it. The village is supposed to be transformed into thousands of luxury apartments, sold between 500,000 and 2 million dollars, at the end of the Games. Almost 900 dwellings have already been bought, putting the new buyers in the unknown. The selling of a second batch of apartments was postponed until the future of the Games becomes clear.
The Village Plaza
Tokyo 2020 Olympic organizers unveiled on Wednesday, January 29, 2020, the “Village Plaza,” a large, traditional Japanese-style wooden complex at the entrance to the Olympic Village which will serve as a social and service area for athletes. The complex is low-rise and single-story, and does not look very impressive from the outside, yet its 5,300 square meters of space becomes apparent as you enter its many semi-outdoor rooms and galleries.
20 Million Euros for a Site Reserved for Athletes and Journalists
This site, which cost 2.4 billion yen (nearly 22 million dollars), will be exclusively reserved for the athletes, their teams and journalists. It will accommodate various services for athletes (bank, medical station, hairdresser, tourist office, official store of the Olympic Games …), spaces for journalists and for press conferences, or a coffee.
A Showcase Building for the Sustainability of the Tokyo Games
Similar to historical Japanese buildings, its floors, partitions and pillars are made of wooden beams (cedar, larch, cypress), which are symbolically made available by some sixty municipalities throughout the country.
While the site is temporary and will be dismantled after the Games, it is one of the key showcases of Tokyo 2020’s “sustainability”: as its wood will be reclaimed by the municipalities, which are expected to reallocate it to their homes to build benches and public buildings.
Strict Corona Rules for Athletes
Under normal circumstances, the athletes’ village is the party zone and meeting place for athletes from all countries. However, in Tokyo, a very different atmosphere full of strict rules awaits the Olympians. For example, they have to keep a distance of at least two meters at all times, including when eating.
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They must reduce contact, neither hug nor shake hands, and only stay in the cafeteria for a short time if possible. Alcohol may only be drunk in their rooms; it is forbidden in public areas. They also must wear masks at all times outside their own rooms.
Any contact with the local people is forbidden, as are tourist excursions. They are allowed to move into the village only a few days before their first competition, and must leave no later than two days after their last competition.
Fourth Corona Emergency in Tokyo in Force
On the day before the opening of the Olympic Village, the fourth state of emergency in Tokyo came into force. The state will remain in force until August 22 – i.e. after the end of the Games. Japanese citizens can be confident that the Games will be “safe” for everyone thanks to the strictest measures, Thomas Bach said on Tuesday.
Bach: Tokyo is ‘best prepared’ Olympic city
According to the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Tokyo has been praised as the “best-prepared” Olympic host in history. He said this was all the more impressive given the “difficult circumstances.” Following his three-day quarantine after arriving in Tokyo, it was the first time Bach had met face-to-face with Japan’s organizing chief Seiko Hashimoto.
In this article we tried to tell you everything you need to know about where are the 2020 Olympics and the Tokyo village, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section below.
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