Japan on Tuesday marked 500 days to go until next year's Tokyo Olympics formally begin as the local organizing committee unveiled a set of pictograms representing the different sports and competitions to be contested at the 2020 Summer Games.
Also Tuesday, Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, revealed that the 2020 torch relay will start at Fukushima Prefecture's J-Village, a sports facility that was used as a base for workers heading to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the initial stages of the 2011 meltdown crisis.
The choice is designed to underline reconstruction efforts in the Tohoku region, which was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, leading to meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.