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Upon arrival at the Tokyo Olympics, common sense is nowhere to be found
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Michael Ejercito
Jul 22, 2021, 10:04:15 AM7/22/21
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http://archive.is/9rzkH
Upon arrival at the Tokyo Olympics, common sense is nowhere to be found
Cathal Kelly
CATHAL KELLY
TOKYO
PUBLISHED JULY 21, 2021
UPDATED 14 HOURS AGO
104 COMMENTS
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BOOKMARK
00:00
Open this photo in gallery
Members of the media go through a quarantine paperwork check at Haneda
Airport ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
For the thousands of journalists coming to Japan to cover the Olympics,
one condition of entry was a short, hard quarantine. No one would be
allowed to leave their hotel room for three days after their arrival.
Except there were workarounds. The administratively inclined could apply
for an exemption. Those who require food to live were allowed to go to
the store. Essentially, anyone who was determined to leave could.
Some went several steps further. By and large, Tokyo is dry for the
duration of the Olympics.
Nonetheless, strongly worded e-mails were sent warning resourceful
foreign day drinkers that they were bringing “a grave reputational risk”
to themselves, their organization and the Tokyo 2020 Games.
According to the warning, they’d been spotted all over the city. Which
may not have been the smartest thing to announce publicly if deterrence
was the goal.
By Wednesday, the organizers had scrapped the hard quarantine
altogether, then said, “[We] deeply apologize for the difficulties you
have experienced upon arrival.”
No one seems bothered that COVID-19 has arrived at the Tokyo Olympics
What to watch at the Tokyo Olympics: Everything you need to know about
the Summer Games
As that e-mail hit my inbox, I was standing groggily in another line at
Haneda Airport. I’m not sure which one. The one with the green form, I
think. Or maybe the yellow one. People kept handing me forms, then very
politely asking me why I had the forms they’d just handed me. Huge
portions of that first hour are a blur of stamps, stapling and people
taking my phone away from me to do things on it that I could not.
You’ve been flying for 24 hours, you feel like you’ve been glazed in
cooking oil, and the only thing you care about is a hot shower and a
change of clothes.
So when someone holds up a form that is entirely in Japanese and asks if
you’ve filled it out, your best guess is, “Where am I exactly?”
A whole genre of horror stories has sprung up in recent days about how
long it takes to get out of a Tokyo airport right now. As many as six
hours after landing. Sometimes eight.
“I heard nine hours at Narita,” one delighted volunteer told me.
Sadly, I can’t add to the notes of grievance. My journey through all
nine circles of bureaucratic hell took three hours from kiosk to kiosk.
Considering all the nonsense we had to do – verify forms, verify apps,
get new forms, verify those forms, get our forms all mixed up, get them
unmixed, spit in a tube, wait to hear how that went, verify more forms,
get credentialed, clear customs, get fingerprinted and photographed, run
the gauntlet at immigration – it’s a wonder it happened so quickly.
They even managed to hang on to our luggage. A lot of North American
airports can’t manage that under optimal conditions (I’m looking at you,
Tampa).
Around the time they’d wedged a couple of hundred of us into a smallish
departure lounge to wait for the results of our rapid COVID-19 tests –
with the guy next to me, mask off, screaming bloody murder into his
phone – I’d lost faith in the efficacy of the process. Meanwhile, a guy
was walking around the room offering plastic face shields to whomever
wanted one. Screaming Phone Man ignored him, and he ignored Screaming
Phone Man.
But after running through the public safety gauntlet, I’ve come to
understand we all have our roles to play in this farce.
We, the visitors, come laden down with forms, proving we are
sufficiently supplicatory.
They, the hosts, create an infrastructure to process those forms,
proving they are sufficiently gracious.
Together, we link arms and pretend we are fighting this thing together,
leaving unsaid the fact that no one needs to be fighting it at all.
Sometimes, that teamwork does not make the dream work. For instance, why
are foreign visitors banned from using the elevators in the hotel we’re
staying at? The lovely woman at the check-in was very emphatic on that
point. Elevators for locals only.
I’m not complaining, since I could use the cardio. But it still makes no
sense. Whether or not you bar us from the elevators, we are still here,
filling the air in the lobby with our globules, making the breakfast
nook pestilential and befouling the laundry room.
Also, if you are that afraid of contagion, maybe the Olympic fortnight
wasn’t the best time to plan your Harajuku staycation.
But that’s just common sense, and we are well past that. Olympics-wise,
we can’t even see common sense in the rear-view anymore.
Where we are is in the realm of make-believe. The Tokyo Organizing
Committee makes us believe that it’s really scared, and we pretend we
won’t sneak out to the bars if Dad takes his eye off us for a second.
This is why the head of Tokyo 2020, Toshiro Muto, won’t definitively
promise that the Olympics are going ahead regardless of where the
COVID-19 numbers end up. It’s not because he’s considering cancellation.
That ship has launched.
It’s because Muto must pretend to consider cancellation, because he is
pretending to be scared, while we pretend to take him seriously.
Another for instance. In order to leave the airport, I was jammed onto a
bus filled with sweaty, irritated, jet-lagged hacks sitting almost on
top of one another. But in order to leave the bus, we were told to go
one at a time and not touch our luggage, but rather wait for it to be
loaded into a cab, which we would all take singly.
As we waited, a volunteer regaled us with “fun facts” about Tokyo. Fun
fact No. 1: “Tokyo is a paradise for foodies.”
”WE AREN’T ALLOWED TO GO TO THE RESTAURANTS, MATE,” someone bellowed.
This was all getting more high-school auditorium by the moment.
But, like the pretending, the fun facts could not be stopped.
The IOC pretends to be worried about the athletes. The athletes pretend
to be worried about security. The security pretends to be worried about
the “reputational risk to the Tokyo 2020 Games.” And around and around
we go.
While we’re all busy pretending, they’ll manage to wedge in a few
sports. Before you know it, it’ll be over and no one need ever worry
again about running into me as I take huge, wet breaths in the elevator
while hanging over the buttons.
The only people who don’t have to pretend are the local viewers. They’ve
all been locked out of the Games. Which means they’ll be enjoying this
event from the only secure locations at the Olympics: their living
rooms. No forms required for entry.
--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com
Upon arrival at the Tokyo Olympics, common sense is nowhere to be found
Cathal Kelly
CATHAL KELLY
TOKYO
PUBLISHED JULY 21, 2021
UPDATED 14 HOURS AGO
104 COMMENTS
SHARE
TEXT SIZE
BOOKMARK
00:00
Open this photo in gallery
Members of the media go through a quarantine paperwork check at Haneda
Airport ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
For the thousands of journalists coming to Japan to cover the Olympics,
one condition of entry was a short, hard quarantine. No one would be
allowed to leave their hotel room for three days after their arrival.
Except there were workarounds. The administratively inclined could apply
for an exemption. Those who require food to live were allowed to go to
the store. Essentially, anyone who was determined to leave could.
Some went several steps further. By and large, Tokyo is dry for the
duration of the Olympics.
Nonetheless, strongly worded e-mails were sent warning resourceful
foreign day drinkers that they were bringing “a grave reputational risk”
to themselves, their organization and the Tokyo 2020 Games.
According to the warning, they’d been spotted all over the city. Which
may not have been the smartest thing to announce publicly if deterrence
was the goal.
By Wednesday, the organizers had scrapped the hard quarantine
altogether, then said, “[We] deeply apologize for the difficulties you
have experienced upon arrival.”
No one seems bothered that COVID-19 has arrived at the Tokyo Olympics
What to watch at the Tokyo Olympics: Everything you need to know about
the Summer Games
As that e-mail hit my inbox, I was standing groggily in another line at
Haneda Airport. I’m not sure which one. The one with the green form, I
think. Or maybe the yellow one. People kept handing me forms, then very
politely asking me why I had the forms they’d just handed me. Huge
portions of that first hour are a blur of stamps, stapling and people
taking my phone away from me to do things on it that I could not.
You’ve been flying for 24 hours, you feel like you’ve been glazed in
cooking oil, and the only thing you care about is a hot shower and a
change of clothes.
So when someone holds up a form that is entirely in Japanese and asks if
you’ve filled it out, your best guess is, “Where am I exactly?”
A whole genre of horror stories has sprung up in recent days about how
long it takes to get out of a Tokyo airport right now. As many as six
hours after landing. Sometimes eight.
“I heard nine hours at Narita,” one delighted volunteer told me.
Sadly, I can’t add to the notes of grievance. My journey through all
nine circles of bureaucratic hell took three hours from kiosk to kiosk.
Considering all the nonsense we had to do – verify forms, verify apps,
get new forms, verify those forms, get our forms all mixed up, get them
unmixed, spit in a tube, wait to hear how that went, verify more forms,
get credentialed, clear customs, get fingerprinted and photographed, run
the gauntlet at immigration – it’s a wonder it happened so quickly.
They even managed to hang on to our luggage. A lot of North American
airports can’t manage that under optimal conditions (I’m looking at you,
Tampa).
Around the time they’d wedged a couple of hundred of us into a smallish
departure lounge to wait for the results of our rapid COVID-19 tests –
with the guy next to me, mask off, screaming bloody murder into his
phone – I’d lost faith in the efficacy of the process. Meanwhile, a guy
was walking around the room offering plastic face shields to whomever
wanted one. Screaming Phone Man ignored him, and he ignored Screaming
Phone Man.
But after running through the public safety gauntlet, I’ve come to
understand we all have our roles to play in this farce.
We, the visitors, come laden down with forms, proving we are
sufficiently supplicatory.
They, the hosts, create an infrastructure to process those forms,
proving they are sufficiently gracious.
Together, we link arms and pretend we are fighting this thing together,
leaving unsaid the fact that no one needs to be fighting it at all.
Sometimes, that teamwork does not make the dream work. For instance, why
are foreign visitors banned from using the elevators in the hotel we’re
staying at? The lovely woman at the check-in was very emphatic on that
point. Elevators for locals only.
I’m not complaining, since I could use the cardio. But it still makes no
sense. Whether or not you bar us from the elevators, we are still here,
filling the air in the lobby with our globules, making the breakfast
nook pestilential and befouling the laundry room.
Also, if you are that afraid of contagion, maybe the Olympic fortnight
wasn’t the best time to plan your Harajuku staycation.
But that’s just common sense, and we are well past that. Olympics-wise,
we can’t even see common sense in the rear-view anymore.
Where we are is in the realm of make-believe. The Tokyo Organizing
Committee makes us believe that it’s really scared, and we pretend we
won’t sneak out to the bars if Dad takes his eye off us for a second.
This is why the head of Tokyo 2020, Toshiro Muto, won’t definitively
promise that the Olympics are going ahead regardless of where the
COVID-19 numbers end up. It’s not because he’s considering cancellation.
That ship has launched.
It’s because Muto must pretend to consider cancellation, because he is
pretending to be scared, while we pretend to take him seriously.
Another for instance. In order to leave the airport, I was jammed onto a
bus filled with sweaty, irritated, jet-lagged hacks sitting almost on
top of one another. But in order to leave the bus, we were told to go
one at a time and not touch our luggage, but rather wait for it to be
loaded into a cab, which we would all take singly.
As we waited, a volunteer regaled us with “fun facts” about Tokyo. Fun
fact No. 1: “Tokyo is a paradise for foodies.”
”WE AREN’T ALLOWED TO GO TO THE RESTAURANTS, MATE,” someone bellowed.
This was all getting more high-school auditorium by the moment.
But, like the pretending, the fun facts could not be stopped.
The IOC pretends to be worried about the athletes. The athletes pretend
to be worried about security. The security pretends to be worried about
the “reputational risk to the Tokyo 2020 Games.” And around and around
we go.
While we’re all busy pretending, they’ll manage to wedge in a few
sports. Before you know it, it’ll be over and no one need ever worry
again about running into me as I take huge, wet breaths in the elevator
while hanging over the buttons.
The only people who don’t have to pretend are the local viewers. They’ve
all been locked out of the Games. Which means they’ll be enjoying this
event from the only secure locations at the Olympics: their living
rooms. No forms required for entry.
--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com
HeartDoc Andrew
Jul 22, 2021, 10:21:29 AM7/22/21
to
Japan & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
asymptomatic) in order to http://bit.ly/convince_it_forward (John
15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage
mutations and others like the Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, & Delta
lineage mutations combining to form hybrids that render current COVID
vaccines no longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,
HeartDoc Andrew <><
--
Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
Cardiologist with an http://HeartMDPhD.com/EternalMedicalLicense
2024 & upwards non-partisan candidate for U.S. President:
http://HeartMDPhD.com/WonderfullyHungryPresident
and author of the 2PD-OMER Approach:
http://HeartMDPhD.com/HeartDocAndrewCare
which is the only **healthy** cure for the U.S. healthcare crisis
Michael Ejercito
Jul 22, 2021, 11:23:08 AM7/22/21
to
Michael
HeartDoc Andrew
Jul 22, 2021, 12:07:01 PM7/22/21
to
MichaelE wrote:
> I am wondefully hungry!
While wonderfully hungry in the Holy Spirit, Who causes (Deuteronomy
8:3) us to hunger, I note that you, Michael, not only don't have
COVID-19 but are rapture (Luke 17:37) ready and pray (2 Chronicles
7:14) that our Everlasting (Isaiah 9:6) Father in Heaven continues to
give us "much more" (Luke 11:13) Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) so
that we'd have much more of His Help to always say/write that we're
"wonderfully hungry" in **all** ways including especially caring to
http://bit.ly/convince_it_forward (John 15:12 as shown by
http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 ) with all glory (
http://bit.ly/Psalm117_ ) to GOD (aka HaShem, Elohim, Abba, DEO), in
the name (John 16:23) of LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen.
Laus DEO !
Suggested further reading:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/5EWtT4CwCOg/m/QjNF57xRBAAJ
Shorter link:
http://bit.ly/StatCOVID-19Test
Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier especially for
diabetics and other heart disease patients:
http://HeartMDPhD.com/HeartDocAndrewToutsHunger (Luke 6:21a) with all
glory ( http://HeartMDPhD.com/Psalm117_ ) to GOD, Who causes us to
hunger (Deuteronomy 8:3) when He blesses us right now (Luke 6:21a)
thereby removing the http://HeartMDPhD.com/VAT from around the heart
...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,
HeartDoc Andrew <><
While wonderfully hungry in the Holy Spirit, Who causes (Deuteronomy
8:3) us to hunger, I note that you, Michael, not only don't have
COVID-19 but are rapture (Luke 17:37) ready and pray (2 Chronicles
7:14) that our Everlasting (Isaiah 9:6) Father in Heaven continues to
give us "much more" (Luke 11:13) Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) so
that we'd have much more of His Help to always say/write that we're
"wonderfully hungry" in **all** ways including especially caring to
http://bit.ly/convince_it_forward (John 15:12 as shown by
http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 ) with all glory (
http://bit.ly/Psalm117_ ) to GOD (aka HaShem, Elohim, Abba, DEO), in
the name (John 16:23) of LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen.
Laus DEO !
Suggested further reading:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/5EWtT4CwCOg/m/QjNF57xRBAAJ
Shorter link:
http://bit.ly/StatCOVID-19Test
Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier especially for
diabetics and other heart disease patients:
http://HeartMDPhD.com/HeartDocAndrewToutsHunger (Luke 6:21a) with all
glory ( http://HeartMDPhD.com/Psalm117_ ) to GOD, Who causes us to
hunger (Deuteronomy 8:3) when He blesses us right now (Luke 6:21a)
thereby removing the http://HeartMDPhD.com/VAT from around the heart
...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,
HeartDoc Andrew <><
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