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The story
The Asian Games, underway in Aichi/Nagoya, have been hit by a string of organizational blunders. At the opening ceremony, North Korea’s anthem was mistakenly played instead of South Korea’s, prompting the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee to send a formal letter of protest. Athlete housing consists of container-style units that foreign media have described as a “refugee camp,” with reports of flooded floors from water leaks. Thailand’s delegation has also complained about the food being served. The company handling part of the event’s operations is reported to be the same one behind a payment-delay scandal at the Osaka-Kansai Expo, and a major Indian newspaper wrote that the image of “Japan always delivers” has collapsed. On 5ch, opinion is split over whether the blame belongs to Aichi Prefecture and the organizing committee, or to the outside contractor.
The Asian Games have finally kicked off, and while athletes are turning in brilliant performances, trouble keeps piling up, drawing complaints from multiple countries.
■ North Korea’s anthem played by mistake — South Korea protests the mix-up
[Letter of protest from the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee]
Source: imgur.com / Original post here
What people said
Thailand's delegation furious over the food served at the Asian Games
What's it like in your own country?
Don't mooch off us — pay for your own food.
That rice bowl looks brutally hard to eat from, lol
Wasn't this originally a beer mug or something?
The container housing is so cramped you can't even stretch your legs out
Foreign media are calling it a "refugee camp"
And now a water leak has flooded the floor
i.imgur.com/EXA34Bo.jpeg
i.imgur.com/YYFRL0r.jpeg
i.imgur.com/fgeMb4h.jpeg
Nagoya folks have a reputation for being cheap, but taking it this far is a national embarrassment.
A rundown of the organizers' past screwups toward South Korea:
– Played North Korea's anthem at the hockey event
– South Korea's anthem never played at the handball event
– Bused the soccer team to a baseball stadium instead
– Baseball team never received practice scheduling info
– Lighting broke during a baseball night-practice session
– On the day of the basketball final, no shuttle bus showed up, so no practice
– In modern pentathlon, announcers mistakenly called Team Korea "China"
it's the same company that caused a non-payment scandal at the Osaka Expo.
Oh, so it's THAT company
What kind of connections do you need to keep landing contracts while pulling stunts like this?
I heard the Osaka Expo was a huge success though?
Wait, seriously a foreign company? Why isn't this being run by a Japanese company?
Did Aichi just dump the whole thing on this one company?
Governor Omura is nowhere to be seen in any of this.
India too —
"The image of 'Japan always delivers' has collapsed": leaky roofs, buses going astray, housing trouble, and a refusal to take responsibility… a major Indian newspaper slams organizers [Asian Games]
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/c92274c6bfcbc87335012aeaf05562b21c224f48
On posts reporting these Asian Games blunders, there are multiple Japanese-language comments getting defensive, deflecting blame, or just hurling abuse.
Piling embarrassment on embarrassment and dragging Japan's image down even further — what are these people even trying to accomplish?
all failures.
Japan is a declining country whose per-capita GDP has fallen from 2nd in the world to somewhere below 40th.
As the saying goes, poverty dulls the wit — there's no point expecting better.
If it was going to turn out like this, they should've skipped the cost-cutting and just built a proper athletes' village.
Apparently it's more than an hour from the venues too.
There are container-house hotels around these days, so maybe they'll just sell these off as that once the Games wrap up.
That housing looks shabbier than the barracks Miyagi Prefecture threw together in a rush for disaster evacuees right after the earthquake — I couldn't believe my eyes.
Seriously the worst.
And apparently they even got the bed sizes wrong, so athletes' feet hang off the end when they lie down.
there's plenty to complain about, sure,
but as the host nation, Japan still needs to see its responsibilities through.
Hold them liable for the defects.
They should've just left it to a Japanese ad agency.
This is what happens when Aichi Prefecture outsources to a French company for global events — one that barely knows the first thing about Asia.
So what if you're not interested?
It's because of you people that Japan's reputation is tanking — take some responsibility.
And here they are paying 370 billion yen for this.
Please don't frame bureaucratic incompetence as a failure of Japanese people in general.
Background and Key Points of This Story
The Asian Games (Aichi/Nagoya) outsource part of their operations to an outside event-management company, and posters in the thread point out that the firm now drawing criticism is the same French-affiliated company reported to have caused a payment-delay scandal at the Osaka-Kansai Expo. The anthem mix-up refers to North Korea’s anthem being played instead of South Korea’s at the opening ceremony, which prompted the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee to send a letter of protest. The housing complaints center not on a proper athletes’ village but on temporary container units, which foreign media have branded a “refugee camp” — the spark for much of the criticism. Within the thread, opinion is divided over whether blame belongs with Aichi Prefecture and the Games’ organizing committee, who hold the actual contracting and oversight responsibility, or with the outside contractor that carried out the on-the-ground work. There’s also a split between posts tying this to a broader narrative of “Japan’s decline” and posts dismissing that as personal opinion. Some posts cite specific figures like GDP rankings, but where no source is given, these are presented here as thread commentary rather than verified fact.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “From the anthem mix-up to housing complaints — organizational trouble piles up at the Asian Games, as overseas observers ask whether ‘Japan’s reputation for flawlessness’ still holds.”
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