The first medals of Tokyo 2020 deserve those who come out unscathed from the caudine forks of the airport controls set up by the Japanese administration to ensure watertight Games (without, however, succeeding given the multiplication of infections). In spite of the anti-gathering measures, in fact, for all the “foreigners” – athletes, technicians, sponsors and journalists – who land at Haneda airport or in other city airports, there is no escape: all indiscriminately channeled into an endless queue between the windows of what looks like a gigantic aquarium.
The via crucis of the ten stations
An endless and tiring gymnastics between barred corridors that can last between four and seven hours, and where it can happen to come across at least ten “stations”, behind which zealous girls and boys shielded by plexiglass walls subject the unfortunate travelers to pedestrians interrogations. Travelers who, mind you, unlike the Japanese reluctant to the vaccine, are usually already covered with a double dose and in possession of two negative molecular swabs performed at 96 and 72 hours from departure.
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Lots of patience
For heaven’s sake, the patience of the delegations, first of all that of the athletes, is great. Nobody bothered to snort, respecting the sacrosanct reasons for fighting the pandemic. However, going from stand to stand one ends up at a certain point with the loss of any logical coordinate and it happens that one feels four or five times asking for personal data or those related to the state of health or that one has to show the same data several times. documents: the passport, the questionnaires, the so-called written pledge – in strict Japanese – or the qr codes to download from stuttering apps, such as the already mythological Ocha (Online check-in and healt report App), and with all due respect to the European green pass not even worthy of a glance.
The lottery of the anticovid
In short, one gets the impression that with less complex logistics and a little more flexibility, it could be done in half the time. And with less anxiety. Like the one that catches the traveler when unnerved and destroyed, he finally arrives at the salivary analysis station and finds himself suspended for tens of minutes in a kind of anti-Covid lottery, staring at a television that overturns numbers after numbers, in the hope of see that of your test tube appear as soon as possible. Because if the number is slow to appear, there is trouble. Other than the petulance of the immigration service. It’s up to you to deal with the quarantine officials ready to throw you in a Covid-hotel for a couple of weeks. And if you are an athlete, the Olympics is beautiful that it is over before even setting foot in the city.