As you may or may not know, Tokyo is going ahead with the Olympics with only 9% of the population fully vaccinated! The vaccine rollout was super slow! I will be both a front lines back-office personnel working at Haneda International Airport as an IT engineer volunteer for the Tokyo Games. My role will be to keep servers and computers operating, and most of all, virus-free. Lots of desk work and occasionally crawling through cables.
Team Uganda athletes arrived positively infected with the Delta variants and are now under quarantine by CIS / Customs Immigration Services. Other teams are arriving as I speak. There are triple measures in place with some of us wearing face shields and gloves. We are expecting literally tens of thousands of athletes, journalists, and other personnel to be arriving at our airport in the coming days and weeks. I installed scanner systems for passports the other day and unpacked several boxes of these Panasonics.
Hand sanitizer machines are available every 50 ~ 100 meters you walk in the terminals, yet we are still not prepared. The Prime Minister of Japan was here today inspecting the new luggage scanner collection system. Other airports have these, too. As of June 30 159 nations are still not allowed into the country, unless you are competing in the games.
I highly advise not traveling to Japan at this time since vaccinations are so low right now. Even with the State of Emergency measures in place infections are still high, especially in places like Osaka. Over the next few days, committee members will be rolling out additional measures on transporting athletes.
Selamat bertugas untukmu teman ,dan tentu kami menginginkan kau tetap sehat meski aku khawatir setelah membaca keadaan di sana yang kamu gambarkan dalam postingan ini .
Olimpiade ini mungkin berat untuk dilanjutkan apalagi dalam keadaan yang belum sepenuhnya normal namun kita juga tahun acara ini bahkan telah terlambat satu tahun . Jadi bagi kami mendukung olimpiade beserta para petugas disana dengan cara tidak berkunjung ke Jepang dan menonton olimpiade secara online adalah pilihan rasional .
Sekali lagi tetap semangat dan tetap sehat kawan .
@user_not_found nice for sharing this update. It is so sad that the pandemic have denied fans and supporters opportunity to travel. The Olympics is the biggest sports event in the world and an opportunity for nations to celebrate sports.
I would have loved to attend the games to watch Nigeria’s first Gymnast Olympian at Tokyo.
Hello @EmekaUlor and thank you for your lovely comment! I too have always been a fan of the Olympics since 1984, so I was eager to participate in this event.
I should have some new updates for you on Sunday. As you know, the opening ceremony starts tomorrow at 8 pm local time and it’s hectic here at the airport getting monitors and scoring data set up. Remember, the US is 13 hours behind Japan, so you’ll need to be up at around 6 am ET to watch the ceremony. If you cannot wake up for that then it will be re-aired on prime time at 7:30 pm ET. We are estimating roughly about 5000 hours of live broadcasting here.
Here in the States, @user_not_found, you have to pay extra for the privilege if you watch it LIVE. If you watch it on primetime (network TV), given your time zone, it will be tape-delayed. So I won’t get online or log on to YouTube so that I can be surprised since I am on the West Coast.
It’s cool that you are there. Stay safe Tony! Great to know you are vaccinated!
Did the host city, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic committee, give you volunteers Olympic swag to wear? Face mask? Your personal Tokyo Olympic 2020 hand sanitizer or wipes?
@user_not_found I am following the events but not live. Can’t wait to watch the D’Tigers and DTigress at the games. Also one of my students is the only Taekwondo representative at the Olympics, we are rooting for her.
Thanks for the update @user_not_found !! I haven’t been keeping up to date with all the latest progress with the Olympics but I definitely want to watch the opening ceremony live!!! So I’m really looking forward to that! All the best to you and your fellow volunteers and I really hope that things run smoothly all the way until the end!!
This is so disappointing @KarenVChin I know the dad was heartbroken too. The number of newly Covid infected have gone up again according to the data we saw here yesterday. You can get fast updates on scores and competitions here at this link => https://www.gorin.jp/live/ It’s not in English, unfortunately, but could be faster than NBC streams. As for Olympic swag, no. If you were part of the delegation coming over from Belgium then, yes. Swag on! Japanese press liaisons are fully decked out in blue though. The IT guys like us get fancy badges, but that’s about it. I’ll see if I can snag a cap.
