To deepen ties among tenants of the Palaceside Building, building staff and tenants with one another, the Palaceside Building New Year Reception was held on January 17 in Mainichi Hall on the first basement, with about 100 tenants and building people taking part.
This gathering of tenants and building staff is in its eighth year. Sparked by the Great East Japan Earthquake and a rising wish to help one another in a crisis, it has been held since 2013.
The reception has two parts: a lecture and a mixer. This being an Olympic year, Part 1 featured Dai Kosaka of The Mainichi Newspapers Tokyo head office
sports department, speaking on "The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics at last. Will the Games succeed?" =photos above and right.
Kosaka has reported mainly for the Mainichi sports desk since 1999. From 2009 he spent five years in the New York bureau covering Japanese athletes overseas, especially Major League Baseball, tennis and golf. He has also covered two FIFA World Cups and five Olympic Games, summer and winter combined. Drawing on that experience, and weaving in behind-the-scenes Olympic stories, he spoke with heat for nearly an hour.
He first discussed Olympic finances: television rights, especially the fees U.S. networks pay, underwrite the Games, so competition times are set for U.S. prime time regardless of time difference.
On the intensity of equipment races, he noted that "fast swimsuits" that cut water resistance were once banned, and said of the thick-soled shoes now producing record after record in the marathon and elsewhere, "They will probably follow a path like the fast swimsuits."
On Japan's much-watched medal outlook, against the Japanese Olympic Committee's target of 30 golds he offered "30 if things go quite well; realistically about 20." In specific sports, besides swimming, table tennis, badminton, judo and wrestling, which the JOC ranks A, he said karate could produce a crop of golds even without being in the spotlight.
Finally, citing tennis player Naomi Osaka and basketball player Rui Hachimura, from whom much is expected at the Olympics, and many athletes heading to the Paralympics, he said "diversity" is a major theme of Tokyo 2020 and that he hoped for a rise in social momentum to recognize diversity.
At the mixer that followed, after greetings and a toast from Mainichi Building Co. president Toshiro Hara, people exchanged cards and introduced companies and themselves with Kosaka among them, deepening ties.