Some dude comments

I hope Dr. Omi has friends in the government. If Lord Bach gets in a huff over Omi's comments and complains to the J-Govt, they may have to decide between appeasing an angry IOC god or sacrificing their leading expert on a disease which they're not handling particularly well. Choices, choices.

Waddayagonnagivimtado?

A close cousin to "do you know what I mean?", which comes out as "notemean?"

This might have been OK if it wasn't so clearly a stunt.

Perhaps the powers that be behind the games aren't really aware of how easy it is to see through this kind of stuff.

Powers that be: "Oh, we'll use children! Everyone loves children, so if we say that we will have children at the games, people will think that we are great and they will not say horrible things about the games! We are strategic geniuses!"

Taxpayers: "Dude. We weren't born yesterday",

Powers that be: "Drat and curses. We would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling taxpayers!"

I have to say that I actually support this kind of practice. Sure, 1.5 million is pocket change to someone in his position, and it's very likely entirely performative, but in the UK it's not uncommon to see CEOs award themselves colossal bonuses for losing their shareholders vast amounts of money.

At the very least, the mayor is admitting to a mistake and making a gesture of responsibility.

He's still a grade A twit though.

Also, I thought they had a specific word for "gourd", namely 瓢箪.

*Although 'kabocha' is routinely translated as 'pumpkin', the art installation (pictured above) more closely resembles a gourd. While both are members of the Cucurbitaceae family, pumpkin is edible but gourds are not -- they are grown for decorative purposes only.*

Good gourd, you do go into detail!

The next summer games are in Paris. Maybe they should replace whichever events they discard with something French, or French-ish. Pétanque, savate, jai alai. No stranger than some of the events we’ve seen in these ones.

I mean… the Inordinately Oligarchic Committee seem determined to turn the event into their own private sports club, so at least have a little local flavor.

Oh my god, Kenny killed it!

Please the IOC can't have poor countries winning medals, they just don't bring in the big TV bucks.

I mean the 30 top countries could only get 75% of the medals so I guess they can't politically remove poor countries but they can eliminate the sports those countries have a chance at winning a medal.

It would make future medal tables much simpler, though:

USA

China

Host country (token gesture)

Other

Understood yet, perhaps you meant “altruistic” *@Some dude 2:49pm:*

**- **“On a purely semantic level, how can an organization which considers itself omnipotent give itself more power?**

They ARE making themselves “omnipotent” with such actions. (ALL powerful)

No, I did mean “omnipotent”. They already act that way (look at their attitude towards Tokyo), so it just seems odd that they would feel the need to give themselves any more power.

“Altruistic” is jus about the last word I would use in relation to the IOC!

On a purely semantic level, how can an organization which considers itself omnipotent give itself more power?

Hey, they exceeded mine too.

I never expected that one of the composers would have to quit because he was a psychopath at school and boasted about it.

I never expected that a power-crazed oyaji would yank an Olympic athlete off her bike.

I never expected that the start of the triathlon would be blocked by a boat

I never expected that the allegedly impregnable, totally safe, Olympic village would record close on 400 positive Covid cases.

Yet somehow my expectations were indeed exceeded!

Maybe the English committed crimes on the same scale as those other countries.

Well, we did unleash the Spice Girls on the world.

When are we going to get kung-fu in the Olympics?

Doubt we ever will. Kung-fu is a blanket term covering an absolutely vast range of arts.

If it ever does make it to the Olympics, it will be in the modern form of Wushu, which is easily the most made-for-television form of it: very acrobatic and flashy (and looked down on by certain other styles who think that it's totally useless for actual fighting).

For all the people asking about where karate's "roots" are from, here's an interesting quote from Patrick McCarthy, who I can guarantee knows more about it than everyone on this board combined and multiplied by a thousand.

" In studying the pre-history of Karate I discovered that China [i.e. Fujian Province] and SE Asia [Siam/Thailand] were the original sources from which much of Okinawa's old-school fighting arts [defined here www.koryu-uchinadi.com/original_five_fighting_arts.htm] came".

(source: https://theshotokanway.co.uk/An-Interview-with-Patrick-McCarthy/)

We all know that, it is the "we need to live life", " covid is beaten" " deaths are low" tiny minority that seem to deni that fact like they deni just about all reality regarding the pandemic.

I'm not sure if it's denial so much as colossal egotism. The subtext with the posters you refer to is "as long as my life is not inconvenienced, I don't care one bit about how many people get infected, sick, or die".

It would be a kind gesture for China to donate some of those tests to Japan.

Only for them to get lost in some incompetent bureaucratic bottleneck.

It's time to leverage the power of Marmite.

People who like it but are hesitant to get vaccinated should be offered a month's supply if they get the vaccine.

People who hate it should be offered, and forced to eat, a month's supply if they don't get the vaccine.

Win for the NHS (fewer people getting seriously sick) and PR gold for Marmite.

We will conduct antivirus measures to make this declaration the last (COVID-19) emergency."

This won't age well.

They’ll probably edit it to add “this week” at the end.

U.S. flight attendants are notoriously bad. Train them to be more like Asian or European flight attendants and you won't have any problems.

I was always impressed with Lufthansa's staff. Polite, but had this look about them which insinuated "don't try anything clever".

I think Japanese flight staff are fine as long as the majority of passengers are Japanese and are thus unlikely to cause trouble. I wouldn't want to imagine what would happen if some rowdy gaijin got drunk on a JAL or ANA flight and started acting up. Although I would laugh if the mild-mannered flight attendant suddenly busted out some aikido or something and put him back in his seat with a sprained wrist.

The coronavirus is making a mockery of governments worldwide. The UK government is trying to bribe young people with pizzas, Australia's putting troops on the streets, certain states in the US seem quite determined to kill their residents, and Japan's basically whistling Dixie.

(chews gum) "Well, clearly, beach volleyball is a tainted event".

Teacher: "And then, children, the people of Fukushima realised that the government did not care about them at all, and that they were only being used for a sympathy vote".

Children: "What happened then?"

Teacher: "The people of Fukushima voted to elect the exact same people who had done this to them".

Children: "Why?"

Teacher: "Ah...this is Japan!"

If those figures are to be believed 

That "if" at the start is doing more heavy lifting than the combined efforts of every weightlifter competing at the Olympics.

Is he blaming the people for his pathetic leadership?

Looks like it. And he knows he'll get away with it. He might have to take the fall, but we all know what's going to happen at the next general election.

On Thursday night, Aika Suzuki, 22, said she was planning to meet a friend to go out to dinner.

“I think none of my friends care about the state of emergency anymore,” Ms. Suzuki said. “I have been going out as usual.”

She said she had opposed the Olympics at first, “but now that the events have started and I can watch them on TV with my family, it is exciting.”

The education system and propaganda machine doing their jobs effectively, I see.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the meetings.

Koike: "What can we do? The numbers are going crazy, and yet people are still going out, and acting like it's OUR fault!"

Suga: "Have we won any golds in the last couple of hours?"

Kono: "Nope. The Chinese are starting to overtake us in the medal table"

Suga: "Hmm. Can we, like, arrange a flash flood somewhere?"

Koike: "I don't think that's scientifically feasible"

Mori: "Be quiet, woman"

Koike: "Sorry"

Mori: "Anyway, look. Tell them that recent scientific research has discovered that Japanese people get over Covid faster than anyone else because their DNA is special"

Suga: "Is it?!"

Mori: "Course not. But they'll buy it for a few days until we can work out our next move".

Kono: "You're brilliant, Mori-san. Please be our Supreme Honorary Adviser"

Mori: "Ten million a day and you got a deal"

(All bow. Meeting adjourned).

Bach has a Gulfstream idling with the Champaign chilled and the money bags stowed.

I don't know what the German word is for "suckers" but I bet if we had a secret mic on Bach we'd have learned it by now through force of repetition.

They need to make the vaccinations easier to reserve, though. 

You're not British, are you? If not, you have absolutely nailed our knack for understatement.

I imagine that by now the IOC, JOC and LDP are simply beyond caring at this point and will continue to trot out their clichés about how smoothly the games are going and look at the shiny medals.