Banzai! Japan, a nation still suffering from the aftereffects of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, has been awarded the 2020 Summer Olympics.
“I think we conveyed the message that we can hold a safe Olympics,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a comment published by the Guardian.
As in Brazil in 2016, golf will be played during the games, at Kasumigaseki Country Club’s East course, in the outskirts of Tokyo. The East course, which opened in 1929 and was redesigned a year later by Charles H. Alison, has hosted the Japan Open twice, the World Cup once, and lesser events countless other times.
Japan’s tourism officials hope to attract 8.5 million free-spending tourists during the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, although nothing will be guaranteed until radiation leaks are plugged at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is a two-hour drive from Tokyo. Last month, in the latest chapter written for this continuing horror story, the plant’s operator acknowledged that the tormented facility was spewing roughly 300 tons of contaminated groundwater into the Pacific Ocean every day.