SNOOPING ON THE NEIGHBOUR

You take your excitement where you can get it while living the quarantine life

Not far from my hotel window is a three-storey building with a rooftop patio. Every now and then a young man comes outside and starts practising his golf swing. He takes some big cuts with his driver. Then he switches to an iron and grooves a couple.

Is he playing a round in his head? Did he just go driver, 7-iron, 7-iron on a tough par-5? Is he going to make the birdie putt?

These are the things you wonder when you spend three days in a hotel room. The view from the window isn't much, but it's also the only view I have for 72 hours. Having come to the Japanese capital to cover Tokyo2020in-2021, I'm staying in this room as part of a mandated quarantine for Olympic visitors. Golf Fella is what passes for excitement from the outside world.

I admit that this would be a terrible plot for a Hitchcock film. Bored journalist looks out window and witnesses … poor golf swing. But the only street in view rarely has any traffic at all.

My hotel is in Shinagawa, a neighbourhood that is fairly close to the western side of

Tokyo Bay, where a number of Olympic venues and facilities sit. The hotel we originally booked for this Olympic visit was situated more in the tourist area of downtown, but it did not survive the pandemic. Local organizers rebooked us into this one. When I looked the place up while preparing to come, the first word in the Google description of it was “unassuming,” which is not high on the list of preferred adjectives.

And yet it is a perfectly accurate description. The hotel is spartan and clean, and the rooms are small by North American standards, which is probably big by Japanese standards. The bathroom is compact enough that the sink faucet can be rotated 90 degrees and used to fill the bathtub. Genius! The toilet has an alarming number of buttons and makes electronic beeps. I prefer my commode to be low-tech.

This quarantine, it should be noted, is not like the hotel quarantines observed in some countries, where leaving the room is forbidden and food is delivered to those inside. We are allowed to go to the lobby, which is crucial. There is a breakfast served there — though you have to eat back in the room — and a water cooler and a vending machine (with BEER) and you can meet food-delivery drivers and Olympic workers who are picking up your daily COVID test sample and you can attempt to chat up the security personnel who are seemingly supposed to be enforcing the quarantine part on guests but mostly seem content to smile pleasantly. Basically, the lobby is Times Square relative to the excitement of the room, is what I'm saying. And, most exotically: there is a cupboard in the lobby with sanitized nightgowns that you can borrow for your evening loungewear. Last night when I went down to fill up my water bottle, another guest was in the elevator, wearing his nightgown and the slippers provided in the room. He is living his best quarantine life. I am not yet on his level.

The food situation has been fine. I brought a giant bag of trail mix, a box of protein bars, and two Costco-size bags of dried meat (pork AND beef, because I am fancy), having had enough challenges at previous Olympics procuring food even when I was not confined to a hotel. This time I loaded up like a doomsday prepper, and didn't really need it. The food-delivery apps are fine, and even add a frisson of excitement because the menus are mostly in Japanese and you can never be entirely sure what you just ordered.

I brought books for entertainment, and there are shows to stream, and I started listening to an audiobook on the plane. This afternoon I tried watching the NBA Finals on the hotel TV but had to settle for what seemed like a college baseball game. Senshu Matsudo versus Sohgoh Kisarazu, for all the marbles. At least, it seemed like it was for all the marbles, because those guys were EXTREMELY invested in the outcome. Senshu rallied late to send the game into extra innings, and then won it on a grand slam in the bottom of the 13th inning. The hitter was weeping as he rounded the bases and almost didn't make it to home plate. The pitcher was also weeping. Everyone was a wreck.

It was a wholly unexpected Olympic scene-setter. Here I was, stuck in a hotel room, in Tokyo for the Olympics but just as easily anywhere else in the world, and all of a sudden there was sporting elation and heartbreak in equal measure. If the Olympics do anything reliably, it is that.

The rooftop patio across the way is sadly empty. Later, my nightgown awaits.