The Japan Times: People in Japan have been complaining about the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics since Japan’s capital was awarded the games. Netizens have railed against everything from the apparent insensitivity of hosting the two-week competition while the Tohoku region continues to recover from the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake to the mascots that look like cartoons characters.
With just under two years to go before the opening ceremony, the online gripes are only picking up. They are aided by the government’s decision to weigh solutions to the country’s hot summers that come across as verging on the ridiculous.
Last week, the government said it would consider introducing daylight saving time ahead of the Olympics to mitigate the effects of the expected high temperatures. Early thinking would see clocks nationwide moved forward two hours.When this news broke last Monday morning, the Japanese phrase for daylight saving time, samā taimu (サマータイム, or “summer time”), almost instantly jumped to the top of Twitter’s trending list. The general consensus from netizens could best be summed up by the top comment on a matome site about the topic — “stupid.”
An immediate concern from those online was the sheer logistics of pulling this off. University professor Tetsutaro Uehara expressed surprise at the announcement, primarily because a decision would have to be made this year and then implemented starting in 2019 (“I hope it’s fake,” one person replied). Twitter user @ginlime poked fun at the idea of such a radical change to the system for all of Japan when only Tokyo was getting the games, and wondered why the government didn’t just move the games to October.In the days that followed, an increasing number of people took to social media to express why they thought daylight saving time was a bad idea.
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