It was made official at 5 o’clock in the morning Tokyo time that Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympics.  This should be good news, right?

I have such mixed feelings about it.  First lets look at the good points.  Japan has been besieged with disasters for the past several years.  I have personally lived though them and rode the waves of depression, fear  and anger that followed those seismic waves.  At this point in time Japan and the city of Tokyo have been given a piece of optimistism about the future.

Of course there will be loads of money made off the olympics, but the real question is will that revenue filter down to the everyday man and woman, myself included.  That historically is usually not the case.  The big corporate sponsors will make off like Madoff, while the mom and pop shops shutter up.

Now lets take a look at what is Japan actually facing.  Japan is still being criticized the world over for it’s mishandling of the Fukushima triple disaster.  Japan and its citizens need to face up to the facts and do what is necessary to correct Fukushima, and to take effective measures for it to never happen again.

Japan has totally bungled it’s economy and has a debt that is growing larger second by second.  I am no economist, but I feel the bite of rising food prices while salaries remain completely stagnant.

There is the low birth rate.  This is something that will take generations to overcome, but if there are not more youth, and those youth are not involved in helping forge Japan’s future than the future will turn into the horror that we presented to the world though Akira in the early 1980s.  (In the comic, Akira, the 2020 Olympics were set for Tokyo too.)

These are all very serious problems that need answers.  I am optimistic about the future, because to be pessimistic pushes me over the edge of depression.  I do truly hope for the best.  I hope that the Olympics will not be used as a snake medicine cure all tonic, that will only lead to ruin and disappointment.

Tokyo and Japan at large has set itself a goal of the year 2020.  There is a lot of hard work to be done to show the world what a great country Japan can be.  I have to be hopeful that bread and circuses tactics of the past will be discarded for a brighter future.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 8th, 2013 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Photography Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.