Tokyo Games depriving locals of opportunities for sports, biz events

January 27, 2020

Tokyo--Renovation work to turn facilities in the Tokyo metropolitan area into venues for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics has been making it difficult for people and companies to find places for sporting and business events.

Renovation work began in November 2017 at Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo's Koto Ward, where Olympic tennis and Paralympic wheelchair tennis events will be held, in 40 of the 49 tennis courts. The rest were also closed by October 2018.

Some of the courts reopened last autumn, although only temporarily. All the courts have been reclosed since late last year.

To make sporting facilities available for citizens, the Tokyo metropolitan government launched in 2018 a program for universities and companies to make publicly available their gymnasia, baseball fields, tennis courts and other facilities.

The program was used around 50 times in the year from April 2018, but the figure shot up the following year, to some 330 in April-November.

"Tokyo doesn't have many tennis courts to start with. We are still short of them," an official of the Tokyo Metropolitan Tennis Association said. "There are many 'court refugees' out there."

The Tokyo Big Sight convention center in Koto Ward, which will be converted into the media center during the Olympic and Paralympic periods, has been partially under renovation since April last year, with the main exhibition building closed.

The so-called Comic Market, or Comiket, a popular trade fair where self-published fan magazines are sold, has been held at Big Sight every August. Last year, Comiket had to use multiple venues due to the work and add an extra day to the event period to make up for the space reduction.

This year, it will be held much in advance, in May.

Some 250 exhibitions are expected to be canceled at Big Sight during the 20 months from last April, with an estimated 2.2 trillion yen in sales to be lost, according to the Japan Exhibition Association.

"Organizers are dealing with the situation by taking such measures as scaling down events, moving venues out of Tokyo and changing schedules," said Isokazu Tanaka, head of the association's secretariat. Jiji Press