I've seen Akira, it's this sort of iconic movie from 1988, Wikipedia calls it, a Japanese

animated post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action film.

It takes place in a dystopian futuristic Tokyo.

In one early scene, you see a sign advertising the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics, as in this

movie accidentally predicted where the 2020 Olympics would land, except for, you know, what happened

in 2020.

It's even more interesting in the movie that 2020 Tokyo Olympics billboard has some graffiti

underneath it, and it reads, chushi da chushi, meaning just stop it or just cancel it.

And that too mirrors real life.

Since the start of the pandemic, people in Tokyo have been protesting the Olympics, saying,

chushi da chushi, just stop it.

So it appears that the Tokyo Olympics are going to press ahead, even though we are in the

midst of a serious global health pandemic.

Jules Boykoff, he's a professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon.

He represented the US Olympic soccer team and international competition, and he's really

into the Olympics.

Author of four books on the Olympics, maybe.

We checked, he's definitely written four books about the Olympics, and he's been following

the Tokyo games closely.

And for me, it's a chance to slow down and think about the Olympics more generally.

A lot of what we're seeing in Tokyo is actually not necessarily Tokyo problems, but they're

Olympic problems that get imported into each and every host city.

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