{"id":6112,"date":"2012-07-30T14:55:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T05:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/?p=6112"},"modified":"2012-07-30T14:55:55","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T05:55:55","slug":"london-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/london-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"London 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the Olympics have started, it seems that there is only one thing in the news in Britain. Well, there are also some stories about Spain being on the verge of financial disaster, but those stories have been around for a few months now, so no one takes any notice of them anymore. I have a feeling that will become really<\/em> big news one of these days, though. <\/p>\n

Did you watch the opening ceremony? I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m going to watch it when I get home tonight. The reviews in the press were really good, so it seems to have been successful in achieving its aims. By the way, did you hear about the security problems before the games started? The company who had been paid to provide security guards didn’t send enough people, so the police and the army have been called in to help. There has also been a big problem with empty seats at many of the venues. Apparently, athletes who could not get tickets for their families were really angry to see big parts of the stands completely empty, and there have been lots of stories about this in the British media over the weekend. From now on, however, the focus will hopefully be on the sport rather than the politics. <\/p>\n

To be honest, the Olympics does not do much for me. I want to watch the 100m finals, but apart from that, I’m not really interested. I don’t like the fact that there is so much corruption behind the organisation of the Games, I don’t like the inclusion of sports like football and tennis for which the Olympics is not even really important, and I don’t like the way the games have become so commercialised. (Apparently, only Visa cards could be used to buy tickets for the Games because Visa are one of the official sponsors. I also heard one of the organisers say people wearing Pepsi T-shirts would not be allowed in because Coca-Cola is a main sponsor.)<\/p>\n

Having said that, I have a lot of respect for the athletes, and I’m sure there will be some great stories. For this week’s entry, I thought it would be interesting to find out what everyone thinks about the Olympics. Here are some questions to get you started, but please feel free to write anything you like. <\/p>\n

1. Do you like the Olympics? Why (not)?
\n2. Did you watch the opening ceremony? What did you think?
\n3. Which events will you be watching?
\n4. Which event(s) are you looking forward to the most?
\n5. Who is your favourite athlete?
\n6. In which events do you expect Japan to win medals?<\/p>\n

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.<\/p>\n

PS
\nAs you know, I went to Suzuka this weekend to help Tonari San in the 8-hour endurance race. We were part of a team from a shop called “Motokids,” and there were three bikes in the team, each with three riders. The numbers of the bikes were #51, #52, and #53. Tonari San’s team were #52, and they were using his bike. The bike crashed twice during the race (not when Tonari San was riding), but there was not much damage, so the mechanics were able to repair it, and the team carried on. In the end, #52 came 35th out of about 60 finishers, so everyone was happy. There was one really scary incident where one of the top riders crashed and the bike burst into flames, but the rider was not hurt, and the team rebuilt the bike in about two hours and sent one of the other riders out to ride it to the end of the race.
\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the Olympics have started, it s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.btbpress.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}