The 2020 Games will be held in Japan, and while Tokyo is likely to be a better organized host than Rio, it has challenges of its own.
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In an 11-minute interlude that started with an a cappella rendition of Japan’s national anthem, Tokyo showed it was warming up for the Games with a video featuring Olympic athletes and computer game characters passing a red ball between one another. By the way, USA Today’s story about Abe’s appearance includes this awesome correction: “This story has been corrected to show that Abe was not the originator of the Super Mario idea”.
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, was unsure he would make it to Rio in time for the Closing Ceremony, so what do you do when you need to speed up time travel?
That was a reference to Mr Abe’s entrance before the vast crowd at Rio’s Maracana stadium where plumber Super Mario came out from underground after drilling down from Tokyo into the earth to reach Brazil.
Then the Doraemon cartoon character appears onscreen preparing a green pipe tunnel in Tokyo for Abe to arrive in Rio on the other side of the globe.
Yes, that is a massive green pipe that he came out of (a la “Super Mario Bros.”).
The facility is being decommissioned and that is expected to take decades to achieve, while some areas around it remain uninhabitable due to high levels of radiation.
Despite all the hoopla they create over content ID controversies and copyrighted takedown notices, it was Super Mario who stood tall at the center of the world’s focus at this year’s closing ceremony for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A doff of the characteristic red cap, and lo and behold, you have Shinzo Abe, the Japanese PM who has certainly earned himself a cool badge for pulling this off.
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“I wanted to show the world Japan’s influence with the help of a Japanese character”.
