Unique solution rolls in to help Muslims pray at Tokyo Olympics on February 6, 2020TOKYO: For the thousands of Muslim athletes, officials and supporters arriving in Tokyo for the Olympic Games later this year, it may be a struggle for them to find an appropriate place to pray. The answer might just be found roaming the streets of Tokyo on the back of a truck. By the time the […]
Japan hoping surprise U-19 World Cup appearance is just the start on January 17, 2020TOKYO: Cricket is barely on the radar in Japan, where baseball, soccer and sumo wrestling dominate the sporting landscape, but all that could be about to change after its under-19 (U-19) team qualified for the World Cup in South Africa. It is early days yet, of course, with the Japanese Cricket Association (JCA) founded in […]
Japan’s veteran maulers happy to die in their boots on September 3, 2019Japan may have been seen as a leftfield choice to host the Rugby World Cup but if you want a sense of the country’s long love affair with the game, you could do worse than to get along to Tokyo’s Fuwaku club. The dozens of players running, passing, mauling, scrummaging and crashing into one another […]
‘We are alive’: Tokyo Olympics 2020 ceremonies to focus on rebirth on August 1, 2018TOKYO: The opening and closing ceremonies at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will reflect themes of ‘reconstruction’ and ‘re-birth’ that have run through preparations for the Games, newly-appointed creative director Mansai Nomura said on Tuesday. Over the last two decades, the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics have become an increasingly important medium […]
Tokyo focuses on environment two years out from Olympics on July 24, 2018TOKYO: With two years to go until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese capital is hoping to use the Games as motivation to improve its environmental sustainability. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, who was previously Japan’s Minister of the Environment, has made lowering emissions and plastic litter prevention some of her main objectives in charge of […]
Faster, Higher, Hotter: Tokyo weather prompts 2020 Olympics fears on July 19, 2018TOKYO: As the two-year mark approaches for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Japan is being scorched by an intense heatwave that has prompted fears of similar extreme weather when the sporting showpiece takes place in the country. More than a dozen people have died as temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) for the first […]
Guardiola’s City players dominate World Cup as last-eight looms on July 6, 2018SAMARA: With many of Manchester City’s players still competing in the later stages of the World Cup, the influence of Pep Guardiola’s English champions is being felt across the globe. As eight teams prepare for the quarter-finals, the majority of the City team that ran away with the Premier League title by a record 19 […]
Swimmer bids to become first to cross Pacific, raising awareness of plastic pollution on May 26, 2018YOKOHAMA: When Ben Lecomte stepped onto land for the first time after swimming across the Atlantic Ocean in 1998, he told himself ‘never again’. Yet, 20 years on, Lecomte is attempting an even more daunting challenge as he looks to become the first person to swim across the Pacific Ocean, covering 9,100 kilometres. On Tuesday, […]
Festival brings sunshine to scandal-hit sumo wrestling on April 17, 2018TOKYO: Laughter, sunshine and optimism were the order of the day at the ceremonial Spring Festival sumo tournament held at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo on Monday. As the ancient sport looks to move on from a raft of negative publicity surrounding incidents ranging from assault and bullying to accusations of sexism, there were […]