Hits and misses of the Asian Games organisation in Nagoya

Sharmistha Gooptu, Nagoya

Last night in Nagoya. Another day of intense competitions — wrestling, archery, hockey, cricket and the rest. Gold medals in cricket, wrestling, golf and hockey… It has been a successful Games for India, Arigato (thank you) Nagoya!

As for the overall Nagoya experience, from landing here on September 17 to the last day, it’s been a journey of hits and misses so far as regards the organisation of the Games. Firstly, compared to Tokyo, Nagoya is still provincial. English signage has not penetrated beyond the central shopping districts, and even there, it’s mostly Japanese. In a station as central as Kanayama, one is not able to make a credit card payment in a Family Mart store for a sandwich, because the screen only has Japanese instructions. Very few people speak English but that might not have been an issue had there been enough signage. For a host city, which has had years to prepare for the world descending here, this should have been taken for granted for the visitors.

Second is the issue of media transport. While the saving grace has been the local railway
network, including the fast trains, what has been an issue is the designated media transport for the accredited media. On many occasions, media colleagues have complained about media buses not being on schedule, the difficulty of locating the designated bus areas — for instance, in Nagoya station or in Gifu station. There is no signage at any of these places marking a media transport point, and members of the media have had to depend on word of mouth to spot these zones.

Bus timings have often been erratic, and sometimes bang on time. Sometimes the bus has simply not been there. Going to the boxing finals at the Nishio Gymnasium, we did not find a single volunteer outside the Minami Sakurai station, nor the media bus which had been there earlier, on the day of the semi-final. Eventually we shared a taxi ride with a local journalist, as the Uber cabs are few, and the Gymnasium being in a fairly remote area. The very same issue of the remoteness of several competition venues, and their distance from the nearest train stations, had resulted in the visiting media’s dependence on the assigned shuttle buses.

Positives; the spirit of the Nagoya volunteers, who were always rushing to help, walking people to where they needed to be, always with a smile and a bow. If they didn’t always have enough information or were not able to communicate it sufficiently clearly, they did their best in every other way possible. It wasn’t just the volunteers, it’s the people in general whose public spirit and a sense of larger community, that has done much to salvage the lapses of organisation of the Games. Bystanders at train stations have jumped to the assistance of lost journalists and visitors, guiding them to the volunteers and taxi stands. It’s always been ‘we’ not ‘I’, in the true Japanese ethos.

Finally, Nagoya is an orderly and safe city for work. Unlike many cities of the West, there has been no issues with travelling back very late at night after covering multiple events. There is no drunkenness or hooliganism, and as a rule, people are there to help in any which way they can.

Arigato Nagoya. Host cities of the future could learn from you both ways — the hits and the misses.

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