I'd like to think it's because the Tokyo bid used my favourite Franco-Japanese, but am sure the fix was long in before she got to speak yesterday.
They could have used even fewer mono-ethnic-Japanese on that stage, to better reflect the country as it is, rather than as many of the twats want it to be, and think it still is. Needless to say, the one hybrid they do choose is even fairer than the monoethnics (as if the Japanese are monoethnic). In any case, even with the Japanese over-dub it sure seemed like her French was fluent*: you'll never see a Japanese person rip through English vowels and consonants, much less French, at the speed she did with the confidence she showed. Hell, they don't even speak Japanese with that confidence. Nothing like a pretty face that can also do her job (and doesn't walk like she's Japanese).
Sure, if any city has the pockets for the atrocity that the Olympics inflicts on public finances this is the city. However, it does nothing to slow the rot at the peripheries of this dying country, and accelerates the gilding of its centre. Surprised hysteria over Fukushima did not kill the bid, but one good quake anywhere close to Tokyo...
There are a few problems:
- most of the new venues are on landfill in a siesmic zone
- at sea-level in a tsunami zone
- Tokyo is in the fallout zone from the Hamamatsu reactors
- Narita Airport still sucks, and Haneda cannot expand
- August in Tokyo!
- this economy may yet choke on its internal debts, as the miracle cannot last forever
*Got to hear her original a little later. I am a poor French speaker but I do not think she is fluent, albeit far better than me.
Christel (spelling?) sure looks classy, but she's as toxic as the rest of them.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the bidding process for the games is a competition who can bribe and kickback-create the best, it's hard for East Asians to lose these things.
I'm happy that Germany doesn't have to spend so much money for Spain's Olympics, but Istanbul would have been the proper symbol if the IOC still had some good left in them.
When it goes down in 2020, I'll not have entered this dark country for at least 6 years. Knowing my interest in the previous games, I'll probably miss it on TV as well. Oh how that fills me with joy.
In good conscience, how could they bid for the games without showing a complete rebirth of the Tohoku region and much greater progress on the Fukushima cleanup?...
ReplyDelete"In good conscience" they could not, of course.
DeleteRebirth? It's not even the local fallout that's the main issue: Tohoku was facing a worse economic and demographic decline than the national average even without the disasters. They'll rebuild stupid shit, like highways and seawalls, even as the place empties out, for the same reason as the Olympics: pork-barrelling fills the coffers of LDP supporters, who pay them off. Place needs controlling of the reactor piles, quarantine of the area, and resettling of the people. Neither more nor less. That isn't profitable...