Host towns interact remotely with international athletes

Hundreds of Japanese cities and towns are participating in the Host Town initiative, a project to promote human, economic and cultural exchanges in connection with the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Japanese municipalities will host athletes from around the world during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, with each local government having chosen a country or region.

Although training camps in various municipalities have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, local residents are interacting with foreign athletes through social media and other means, hoping to keep up communications even after the Games are over.

Satoshi Onoda, an official of the city of Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, waved at the screen of his smartphone on July 14, greeting Mongolian women para-athletes. One of the women said, “I miss Japanese rice,” and Onoda, 47, nodded smiling as he listened to a Mongolian city official translate her words.

In February, four Mongolian athletes visited Yaizu. They were scheduled to stay for a month, but flights to Mongolia were canceled due to the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Some of the athletes were homesick at first, but after receiving strawberries and other gifts from Yaizu residents, they were able to focus on their training, and all achieved new personal bests.

Since returning home in June, the Mongolian athletes have kept in touch with people in Yaizu via social media, using a smartphone translation app. Onoda said: “The bond between us deepened through the hardships of the coronavirus outbreak. I’m looking forward to seeing them next year.”

Following the spread of the coronavirus, training camps before the Games were canceled one after another all around the country, making it difficult for people in each area to interact with the athletes.

But some local governments have been using video sites and social media.

For example, the city of Morioka in Iwate Prefecture sent footage of cherry blossoms to Canada, while the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture, received a message from Thailand saying, “Let’s overcome together [the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 outbreak].”

The Host Town initiative was modeled after the One School

One Country project, which began at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games. In the Nagano project, 75 local schools supported a country or a region participating in the Games. Children learned about the history and geography of the place that their school interacted with, and deepened their understanding of it before the Games.

The Nagano project acquired a good reputation among participants in the Games, and similar projects have been introduced by host cities of subsequent Winter Games. For the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea, 40 schools in Gangwon Province, where the competition venues were located, participated in the project.

The Host Town initiative introduced for the Tokyo Games differs from the Nagano project in that not only schools but also local governments participate in exchanges.

If the excitement of the Games spreads nationwide, and exchanges continue in a wide range of fields afterward, the initiative will become one of the legacies of the event.

Since 2016, a total of 498 local governments have decided to promote exchanges with 171 countries and regions under the framework of the Host Town initiative.

Host municipalities were paired with a certain foreign country or a region with consideration for existing relationships between sister cities or at the suggestion of the Japanese government. Local governments have hired people from the partner countries and regions to assist in their efforts to learn their customs and languages.

The theme of the Tokyo Games is disaster recovery. The 31 municipalities affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 will invite athletes from countries and regions that sent them rescue teams or provided relief supplies after the earthquake.

Since November last year, four South Sudanese athletes have been training in Maebashi. “Many people say to me, ‘Good luck,’” said Guem Abraham, 21. “The kindness of Japan will surely reach not only us but also foreign athletes coming to Japan in the future.”

The Yomiuri Shimbun Satoshi Onoda, right, talks to Mongolian athletes via smartphone at the city government office in Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on July 14.