As the countdown begins with 500 days until the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Japan must assess and address some of the harsh realities facing the nation if it hopes to pull off a successful 2020 Tokyo Games, a Japanese Olympic Committee member said in a recent interview.
Without using next year's Summer Games as a yardstick, gauging where Japan needs to be five years from now will be like shooting in the dark.
"There is this image of (Rio) being a checkpoint, but at the same time it will be an Olympics that gives us an inventory of four years' of work," said Koji Ueno, a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee's athletes development program.