Japanese sports officials who attended the summer Special Olympics for the mentally impaired in the Irish capital last month are determined to make a success of the winter Special Olympics to be held in Nagano in 2005.
Yutaka Yamamoto, public relations chief of the Nagano Special Olympics organizing committee, said, "There is still a tendency in Japan not to recognize the existence of the mentally handicapped. It's natural for the people of a civilized country to coexist with such people. We want to make the Nagano Games an occasion for that in Japan."
Japan sent its largest-ever delegation of athletes, officials and observers to Dublin to learn as much as possible in preparation for the Nagano Games, which will be the first Special Olympics to be held in Asia. Nagano hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998.