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The story
At the Asian Games currently underway in Aichi and Nagoya, a video showing Thailand’s national sepak takraw team spending the night sleeping on a lobby floor after failing to secure hotel rooms went viral on X (formerly Twitter), drawing criticism from abroad. Reports also say the team’s meals were meager. On 5ch, users piled on about a hotel shortage driven by surging inbound tourism and organizers’ slow response, with some questioning the responsibility of Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura, while others pointed back to the cardboard-bed controversy at the Tokyo Olympics, arguing “this isn’t a one-off.”
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🚨 Thailand’s National Sepak Takraw Team Left Stranded With No Accommodation at the Asian Games
Thailand’s national sepak takraw team arrived in Nagoya for #AsianGames2026, only to find…
Source: video.twimg.com / original post here
What people said
No hotels whatsoever, they had no business hosting this
Nah, Japan's hosting jobs have been a mess across the board lately
Really shows how nasty the people running this in Nagoya are
Guess we're getting flooded again
Even finding a room for 30,000 yen would count as super lucky
They probably figured something would get sorted once they arrived
Or did they just show up and go "wait, where's our hotel?"
Probably somewhere around Aichi Sky Expo
Direct your complaints to the Aichi governor
Aichi's Asian Games. It's a disaster.
Stories keep pouring in of blunders inconveniencing athletes from every direction.
They say a country's social functions collapse before the country itself does. Japan can't even keep up appearances at an international event anymore.
For residents it's all downside, zero upside
Get your act together!
The participating countries tell Japan how many rooms they need, and Japan just has to provide that many — right?
Did a bunch of unrelated people flood in too?
And on top of that the response was slow with zero flexibility
They could've just booked another hotel, that's all it would've taken
They wheel out Johnny's (talent agency) idols and other amateurs — just stick to actual experts
There's no way you can conjure up lodging for 2,000 extra people out of nowhere
Use your head
And they're the ones who wanted to host so badly — that's on them
This is just the real state of Japan
Everyone clocks out right on time, so don't expect any flexibility
It's not like the local government runs it directly
Background and Key Points on This Story
Aichi Prefecture, including Nagoya, has been dealing with a chronic hotel shortage driven by surging inbound tourism, and thread commenters noted that vacancies are scarce even in neighboring Gifu and Hamamatsu. Lodging for international events is normally arranged in advance, with the host coordinating room counts with each country’s delegation ahead of time, so a last-minute accommodation failure like this points to overly optimistic planning by the organizers. The 2021 Tokyo Olympics faced similar criticism when cardboard beds in the athletes’ village were slammed as disrespectful to competitors, and this incident is likewise feeding distrust in how Japan manages major international events. The thread features both calls to hold the governor accountable and comments pointing to the structure in which operations are outsourced to contractors via bidding, so it’s worth noting that no single cause has been pinned down at this stage.
*This article is composed from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Japan, huh — Thai team left sleeping on the lobby floor with no lodging and skimpy food at the Aichi/Nagoya Asian Games, draws worldwide criticism lol.”
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